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THE 


DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 

BY ^ 

Mrs. Frances Grant Teetzel. 


— : 

**Suum cuique," 



CLEAVES, MACDONALD & CO., 

1885. 



\ 



COPYRIGHT ; 

FRANCES GRANT TEETZEL, 

1885. 


AU rights reserved. 


PRINTED BY 

James S. Adams, 

BOSTON, MASS. 


DEDICATION. 


This “short and simple annal” is lovingly dedi- 
cated to my dear son Harry, whose views on the 
subject of dedication exactly coincide with my own. 

THE AUTHOR. 

January 21, 1885. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE. 

Chapter I i 

Chapter II . . . . . , 6 

Chapter III — The Snow Plow lo 

Chapter IV — Cousin “Tildy ” and Lemuel her Husband 17 

Chapter V — The Arrival 23 

Chapter VI — In the Morning 31 

Chapter VII — Dinner! 39 

Chapter VIII , . 48 

Chapter IX — A Mystery . 55 

Chapter X — Amos Early as an Office-Seeker ... 60 

Chapter XI — Waiting 65 

Chapter XII 72 

Chapter XIII — Why Absence on the part of Gabriel Strong.? 75 

Chapter XIV — The Dynamite Cartridge ... 82 

Chapter XV — Peter Heinze 95 


Conclusion 


99 



THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


CHAPTER 1. 

“ Gottlieb, Gottlieb ! ” the call proceeded from old 
Amos Early, as he stood by the kitchen door of his 
large farm-house, one cold day late in the fall, and held 
fast the bridle of his frisky little mare Zep. 

When the call was again repeated, and again, the 
door opened and through the space thus made, out 
came the gray head of his wife. 

“ Can’t y’ make ’em hear ye, father ” said the 
woman who clipped and accented her words as careless 
western people, who know better, very often thus 
deflect from the beauty of their mother tongue. 

It’s high time for all the boys to be up to dinner,” 
she added. 

‘‘So ’tis,” said her husband. “Still,” remarked his 
wife, “ I don’t see why that boy ain’t here to do the 
chores.” 

After Samuel her youngest son had explained to his 
good mother the meaning of “Gottlieb,” she understood 
it as part and parcel of what she considered as foreign 
profanity. Ever since, she evaded its use and, instead 

I 


2 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


of this name so objectionable, said *‘that boy” when 
speaking of the hired man’s new assistant. 

“If it wasn’t fur my stiff knee,” said Amos, “I’d go 
down the hill myself and water the mare — here he is, 
now,” he said as he saw Gottlieb come up the path at 
an unusually slow gait. As one formed of wood the 
boy gathered up the reins and let the horse take her 
own way down the easy slope of the hill to the river. 

“If any one always does things upside down it’s 
Gottlieb,” said Amos to his wife, who had now opened 
wide her door and stood there on the stoop while the 
kitchen cooled off before dinner. 

Mrs. Amos had chronic catarrh and a troublesome 
cough, yet never did it occur to her to charge them to 
going bareheaded out into the cold. 

Down the hill went Gottlieb because the mare did ; 
as he let her wade into the water to drink, he let go the 
lines, and planted himself in vacant stare on the river 
bank. Gazing out into space, he presented a most ludi- 
crous spectacle. His eyes were white, shallow and wide ; 
his neck was long, and his blue shirt baggy about the 
waist ; his trowsers were in welts and folds, held up in 
that condition by the tight legs of the boots he wore 
outside of them ; his feet were broad, of vast extent. 
When one took note of the various features of his round 
face, not neglecting at the same time the flaring ears, 
and the shock of hair like corn silk in hue, one could 
well be excused for gazing at the simple fellow as a 
new and very comical study in human nature. 

Zep drank her fill. On the opposite bank of the 
river she saw a particularly tempting bit of grass. In 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


3 


a fine splash she waded to the other side, where high 
and dry she shook her head as one who laughs in new 
pleasure. 

The light plash in the water attracted the wandering 
attention of Gottlieb. 

“ Coom vonce I ” said he, holding out his crazy old 
felt hat. 

As the river was very cold, as it was slightly swollen 
by a late rain, as it must of necessity be over the tops 
of his boots, and as, moreover, he had a dislike to that 
innocent fluid he never desired to conquer, the rage 
of the lazy boy knew no bounds. What he said in 
German and English, and all at once, and both together, 
and finally ended in a prolonged expletive, shall be left 
to the imagination better equipped to reproduce the 
scene than pen and paper, not to mention the lacking 
coloring of words in themselves. 

^‘Ach!” said he, looking over the muddy stream, as 
the horse pranced in great glee, and flew over the 
meadow. 

Away went Zep ; away after her the boy. It was a 
wild chase over many an icy rivulet and slippery hillock 
before she surrendered in a distant corner of the 
meadow. 

Mounted upon her back, the need of exertion gone, 
Gottlieb allowed no efforts of his own to hasten her 
progress over the rough stony ground, and down the 
bank into the river, and so splash, splash, to his first 
stopping-place. 

Zep sure now to go on up the hill, the boy slid off 
behind, took up the wet lines from the ground to 


4 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


escape any scolding for allowing them to drag — so 
would he drive the mare back to the barn. By this 
time Ford, Sax, Walt and Sam, the four sons of farmer 
Amos, together with the hired man, Tise, had come up 
from the field to dinner. 

They were standing by the corner of the house. 

The sight of “that boy” dragging himself far behind 
Zep, holding her in by the reins, was too suggestive of 
fun to be ignored. Crawford, or Ford, saluted Gottlieb 
with a grin, saying, “Get up, Zep,” in a quick, sharp 
voice Zep never was known to disobey. 

Off on a trot she started. 

Gottlieb would not drop the lines so wet to be soiled 
in the road. Very probably visions of oats in the 
barn, with corn as a side dish and hay as dessert, were 
before the lively mare, for faster and more furious she 
ran like the “gray mare Meg,” and the boy wonderfully 
shaken out of his slow ways hard on behind her. 

Like a new variety of silhouette he jumped in great 
strides, one leg straight out before, the other straight 
out in a stiff line behind, as it looked to the boys who 
regarded the sight with shouts of laughter. 

“Now,” exclaimed a voice from the kitchen, “you 
boys ought to be ashamed of yourselves ; come along 
into dinner, the whole o’ you ! ” Amos led the way; he 
took his seat at the middle of the table, but awkwardly, 
on account of his stiff knee. 

The four boys, Crawford, tall and slim and fair ; Sax- 
ton, a new edition of his mother, brisk in manner and 
speech ; Walter, a taciturn youth, and Samuel, a sharp- 
eyed boy of seventeen mischievous years, together with 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


5 


Tise the “hired man,” scrambled into their places at 
one end of the table. 

Three daughters, Betsy, Maria and Susan, supported 
the left ; while their mother faced her husband from the 
opposite side of the table. 

There was momentary silence for the blessing ; then 
came the work of waiting on the table. 

“Did you see him run.?” said Sam as he put down 
his well-filled plate before him. Thereupon ensued 
another outburst of laughter, joined in by Gottlieb 
himself, who now came into his place by Aunt Early at 
the right side of the table. He was red and panting, 
and grinned at the boys as he attacked the food on his 
plate with the ardor of a hungry boy. 


CHAPTER II. 


While young and old make a business of their din- 
ner we may say of the boys that they were fine, healthy 
country lads who every day worked with their father on 
the farm, and what ‘‘fun” they might add to their 
robust, steady lives, they welcomed as boys will wel- 
come. 

Tise, the hired man, was an Irishman, a good worker,, 
shiftless, no thrift in him, as his pauper ancestors had 
been before him. 

The three girls were strong, well able to help their 
active mother in the work of a house. 

Useful girls were they if of no beauty to speak 
of. Pale eyes, light brown hair cut across the fore- 
head in frantic bangs, like anything else than the 
artistic effect of this style in the make-up of a bewitch- 
ing belle. Betsy and Maria were ‘blessed with round 
faces. Betsy’s face was of the brightest in its expres- 
sion ; eyes quick to see and a firm mouth, whose mild 
lines did not prevent incisive words to escape if there 
were need. Susan had a long face like her father'; 
but fuller eyes, with a downward droop to the forehead, 
told something of intellect, and the delicate mouth 
bespoke innate refinement for its possessor. To say 
that either of the three girls were ordinary rustic 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


7 


maidens would be wide of the truth, for, if somewhat 
homespun in their ways, they were clever in every 
womanly accomplishment, and at the village high school 
were the most thorough of any girls among the sub- 
stantial farmers’ daughters. Good, wholesome girls to 
be in the house with, whose very plainness, joined 
to their neat ways, made the very thought of their 
being beautiful and confined to heavy farm work 
entirely objectionable, even as a thought. 

Dressed in calico to-day they were ready for any 
duty. The expectation of what amusements came day 
by day gave them cheerful thoughts to attack dull 
tasks and heavy. For example, it was delightful to 
go to the reading club ; picnics as they were managed 
in this community were charming (in the abstract). 
Dancing parties were charming, too, and church festi- 
vals and oyster suppers. 

Susan, perhaps, was the scholar of the family. The 
common algebra and geometry of her sisters she had 
supplemented by sundry studies in language and art. 
To be sure her “French ” was peculiar, yet it gave her 
culture. If the French word for sister she pronounced 
as “suur,” and read “bong” and “monsuur,” it was 
hardly her fault, and far be it from one to imply that 
such lapses of pronunciation should provoke a smile. 
She sang, “When the stars shine from heaven afar,” 
a fine song with an amazing accompaniment, which she 
must needs play out of time, and when she sang in a 
nasal voice, generally sharp in its high notes which it 
was her habit to attack fortissimo, the general effect 
of this musical performance was to make her teacher 


8 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


doubt seriously if singing was all it was represented to 
be. But in spite of ‘^coughs and of frowns” Susan 
would sing ‘‘When the stars shine” — distracting all 
ears by her “ups and her downs.” 

Taken as an indication of an earth-bound human 
soul reaching out for something better, her “French” 
and “ Music ” were pathetic if, in fact, there were not 
a trace of nobility in it all. Who should deny that she 
was on the right road } But when she read to her club, 
in a poor voice, French selections from her class book 
neither herself nor her hearers understood, — in an 
accent to drive Monsieur wild ; and when, time after 
time, she sang, “ When the stars ” for every public 
occasion that offered, she was on the wrong road. 
The only fact to destroy its evil tendency was that she 
was wanting in vanity, or self-assertion, hence Susan 
was safe. 

Aside from, on general principles, being the most 
interesting member of the family as its “scholar,” at 
this time she was of added importance, for Gabriel 
Strong, of the Strong Stone Quarries, was supposed to 
be paying her his addresses. This was mutually agree- 
able to all concerned, so why should not the course of 
true love for once run smooth } Alas ! How “ trifles 
light as air” take to themselves wondrous importance 
as they add their weight to the woe of lovers true. 

Amos Early, her father, partook more of the nature 
of his daughter Betsy than of Susan. He was a simple 
farmer whose stiff knee had grown from rheumatism 
contracted in the army. He was a slight, wiry man, 
rough in skin, grizzly hair and beard. His eyes were 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


9 


brown, with a good expression, and his long nose and 
firm mouth denoted energy of character, if at the same 
time neither in face nor manner was there a trace of 
ill temper about the man. 

The newspapers he read as indefatigably as a Lon" 
don cockney, which produced a strange effect upon his 
mental habits. He was bewildered with conflicting 
conclusions in all his subjects of thought; like Betsy 
he had a sharp tongue : hence he was not comfortable 
to talk with ; for, choose which side of a question one 
might, Amos could be depended upon to adhere to the 
other side and to quote disagreeable figures and “facts” 
of the opposition, until no joy was left in the conver- 
sation. His wife, a quickly-moving, nervous little body, 
listened to all the rest, read her daily lesson in the 
Bible, believed it all word for word, and letter for letter, 
and on occasion sympathized with all the world. At 
this date the pranks of her lawless sons on the new boy, 
if hugely enjoyed upon the whole by the boy himself, 
seemed serious enough to her. This gave the greater 
zest to their jokes, and she was often heard to declare 
that their father was the worst one of the lot, in that 
he encouraged their folly by laughing at it. 

In a word, while the work on Amos Early’s farm was 
no more nor less than on the farms of other men, the 
spirit of good nature going with it all, and the mental 
stimulus of degrees of intellectual labor and its peace 
and plenty, made it the place of contentment to which 
many a discouraged wayfarer might turn with the joy 
of a pilgrim to his shrine. 


CHAPTER III. 


THE SNOW PLOW. 

“Oh, yes;” said Crawford, “here’s a letter for y’ — 
got it down t’ th’ office just now.” 

He had been to market in the village and had stopped 
for mail. 

“You don’t say so,” said his mother, extending her 
bony hand for the letter. He drew it out of a side 
pocket and gave it to her. 

“It’s from town,” he said ; “guess it’s Lem Gibbin’s 
writing, it looks like it.” 

As his good mother had the tea poured, she arranged 
her glasses to read ; soon the few facts set forth by the 
round, regular, well-shaded letters were mastered. She 
was prepared to give them to the rest. “Now, pa, this 
is first rate,” she exclaimed ; “ Lem’s coming out for a 
two week’s vacation with Tildy and little Ned ; here’s 
what he says : 

“ ‘ Dear aunt : — 

If agreeable to yourself, and if we shall not be 
in the way, we hope to come out Wednesday to spend 
my dull-time vacation. Matilda is poorly, so that it 
will be more to her than enjoyment to be in your 
beautiful country. I should vastly enjoy the change. 
In haste, as it’s the hour of noon and I’ve yet to eat my 
luncheon. 

Yours, with love to all, 

Lemuel Gibbon.’ ” 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


II 


The old lady read it with evident delight. 

How good that is/’ said she, carefully refolding her 
letter in a pride and care full of reproof to those who 
read at a glance and toss into the waste-paper basket. 

“I’ll tell you what,” said she, “we must git right 
about them turkeys, so’s to finish in time, an’ Wednes- 
day when y’ take th’ load in, stop an’ bring ’em out. 
Tildy’s sickly any way, an’ a holiday will do ’em all 
good.” 

“Then Lem will be here for Thanksgiving,” said 
Sam. “ Pa, you ’n him can tell war stories till we 
can’t rest.” 

“Oh, I dunno,” said his father, “Lem’s a good 
talker — guess we’ll let him do the talking.” 

“Ef he kin beat you atalkin’, Amos,” said his wife, 
“ he’ll have to be a smarter Englishman than ever he 
was yit.” 

“ I like to hear him talk of London and the Queen,” 
said Susan. 

“Lem’s a good fellow,” said Sam. “How’d he 
happen t’ go into the army, pa ? ” Sam continued. 

“Well, he was just over from the old country with a 
box full of clothes an’ a lot o’ money — ’s much as 
two hundred dollars, ef a cent. He was a young feller, 
an’ instid of goin’ t’ work he enlisted. After the war 
it took ’im a year to sober up and cure his dyspepsy 
and rheumatiz ; even then he wasn’t no ways fit for 
what y’d call right down hard work, but he found a 
place to keep books, and has been at it ever sense.” 

“ Must be a stupid, dull kind of a life,” said Betsy. 

“ Seems to me I should like to live in the city,” her 


12 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


sister Maria remarked as one who studies a question. 
Various comments followed as each in turn found 
something to say, and the gist of all said was that 
Lemuel Gibbon, and Tildy his wife, and his only son 
Ned, would not only be well received but very welcome 
to the farm-house of Amos Early. 

The boy Gottlieb had finished his dinner and was 
now ready for work. 

“Gottlieb,” said Ford, “we’d better get in the rest 
of that corn this afternoon. It may snow. You fetch 
out the horse ’s quick ’s y’ kin.” 

Ford could speak pure English when he took the 
trouble. 

Gottlieb shoved away from the table, and grinning 
back to Sam who winked at him with an accompanying 
grimace, sufficient to make any boy laugh, faced the 
back door and shuffled out of the kitchen. 

Said Mrs. Early as the others lingered a moment to 
finish their pumpkin pie and their last cup of tea so 
delicious with white sugar and yellow cream (whereof 
Gottlieb had had two sections of the one and three 
steaming cups of the other), “To-morrow,” she remarked, 
“we’ll finish the rest of the turkeys, so I’ll want all the 
help I can git.” 

“ How many hev y’ this time } ” asked her husband. 

“ One hundred as pretty young ones as I ever see 
in my life,” said she proudly. 

“Then,” quoth Amos, “if Lem wasn’t cornin’ out, 
we’d leave one for them, but they’ll hev all they want 
here.” 

“ That’s so,” said his wife. 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


13 


So the “menfolks” in a bustle and “clatter,” as 
Maria used to say speaking of the boys and their ways, 
went out to their field of corn. 

Many hands put the kitchen in order and ironed the 
clothes that had been washed that morning and which 
the wind had dried. 

This was to get the housework “done up out of the 
way ” to be free at the end of the week when they 
would visit with cousin “Tildy.” 

In the preparation of the Thanksgiving turkeys, and 
ducks, and geese, and chickens for market. Aunt Early 
kept up her reputation for excellence. All were singed 
and sewed, tied up by the legs ready to hang up. 
They were glad every season when this disagreeable 
business was over and the load was well on its way to 
the city. But if, in the distant town, the lucky ones 
who chanced to get one of Aunt Early’s turkeys did 
not have an especial thanksgiving, and long in their 
hearts to go and reward the old lady for her faithful 
work, it was because they did not deserve such good 
fortune. 

The wind was south-east, and that night a light 
snow-storm, to be followed by wind shifting into the 
opposite point of the compass, told of arctic weather to 
come. 

The first thought that sprung up in the mind of Tise 
as he gazed out over the snowy waste early Wednesday 
morning was one of rejoicing that now had come an 
opportunity to use the new snow-plow he had made the 
latter days of the preceding March — as it happened, too 
late for a heavy snow-storm, or any snow storm, to call 


14 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


it into active service. With great alacrity he called 
Gottlieb, hitched up Zep, and prepared for business. 

Usually work in common between Tise and Gottlieb 
could be depended upon to arouse some race antipathy, 
some revival of ancient ill will between Saxon and 
Celt. Tise, for example, had no strong love for taking 
hold of anything to be done, when he could by any 
means evade it ; Gottlieb, like many another great 
mind, was stupendously slow in bringing his faculties 
to bear upon a subject, and to arouse him to the point 
of manual activity was in the nature of other feats of 
human genius. Often would Ford, or Sam, call and 
wait in vain vexation for the boy to do some trifling 
labor, and then do it themselves long before Gottlieb 
would be seen coming along serenely smiling. Hence 
it was, then, that Tise, being endowed with a hot 
Irish temper, when he had to do with Gottlieb, who 
had a German temper, began and ended in a war of 
words characteristic of the Irish nature, accompanied 
by words equal in warmth and effusiveness inspired by 
the German nature of the boy. 

Upon this snowy morning, when the light of day 
was yet below the horizon, there were potent reasons 
why any conflict between Tise and Gottlieb was out of 
the question. 

There was Zep with a sleigh bell or two in her har- 
ness, and Tise looked bland, smiling in the uncertain 
light ; and best of it was, the sharp snow-plow, the first 
Gottlieb had ever seen ; nay, never in the winter of his 
distasteful snow shoveling had he dreamed that there 
could be anything so easy. The grin over his face 
fully equalled the grin over the face of the other. 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


IS 

When farmer Early, on his soft, warm pillow, heard 
the tinkling of bells, he thought he had a pleasant 
dream, and smiled in his drowsy half awakening. 
When Ford, also half asleep, heard the bells, he thought 
it must be snowing, and wondered if “she” would 
go with him for a ride in the evening. 

In solid comfort our duo cleared beautiful paths all 
over the premises where paths could be made ser- 
viceable. 

The word to describe the period of time thus con- 
sumed would probably be “twinkling.” Then it was at 
the expense of so little labor, for on the seat both sat 
side by side. It was too enjoyable ; but so soon at an 
end. 

“ Sammy must go to school,” suggested Gottlieb. 

“I’ll make a road for him,” said Tise, turning Zep’s 
head to the road. 

Soon finished. 

“ Miss Amos,” said Gottlieb, copying the village 
style of designating that lady, “ she will go to church 
sometimes,” he concluded. 

“ Let’s plow a good path for her ; a fine one, bedad ! ” 
said Tise. 

So he did. 

“I say, Gottlieb,” said Tise, “don’t you have to go to 
singing school to-night ^ ” 

“ Iss dees Friday } ” asked Gottlieb doubtfully. 

“ It ought to be,” said Tise informally. 

“Woll den, make mich ein roat, auch,” said the 
boy. 

Very good ; up to the Lutheran church they went ; 


i6 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


thence to the butcher shop ; also to the post-office, and 
so three miles up the hill-road back home, both elated at 
such an amount of work done without exertion — as 
Tise said, “fust rate/’ every road scraped bare and 
clean. It was hard on Zep, but, “ Begorra ! fwhat’s a 
horse for, shure ! ” quoth Tise. 

Ford said afterwards that he knew at breakfast those 
two had been in some sort of a scrape, or they wouldn’t 
have come in from the barn so brisk ; no, sir ! When 
through the day the towns-people stopped in to express 
their feelings, almost too strong for words, Tise’s em- 
ployers found it no “easy” matter to sympathize as the 
case demanded. 

“To think that good neighbors should go and rig up a 
snow-plow, and take the middle line through every nar- 
row, ditch-edged road in the country about, it was too 
bad ; and the first snow, too ! ” 


CHAPTER IV. 


COUSIN “ TILDY ” AND LEMUEL HER HUSBAND. 

If twenty years before, at the end of the war, any 
prophet had told Lemuel Gibbon that the same dull 
street, the same darksome alley, the same smoke-grimed 
window, the same tall stool, the same old chipped and 
scratched desk, and the same young old man before 
it, working, slaving each day, from seven in the morning 
until any hour at night, when his books were in shape 
for the day to follow, — if any prophet had said, This, 
my man, is to be your fortune and lot in the world,” 
would Lemuel Gibbon have turned his back upon what 
was unwelcome, as words of Daniel, or Jeremiah, and set 
himself to associate with one whose speech was more in 
accord with the natural ambition of a young man’s 
heart ? What ! Lemuel Gibbon, full of the restless 
spirit of the camp, its turmoil, its excitement, its desire 
for battle and its love of glory ! 

He was a stranger, an alien soldier ; but how brave, 
how fearless ! What, then ? — a stranger, friendless, no 
influence, — for all save the doing he might have dug 
in the ditch and kept to his shelter, save for the very 
love of the doing. Was his soul brave and steadfast to 


1 8 THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 

stand him in good support through this later life ? Was 
this all ? Had he naught to hope for ? 

Here he was at his desk, then ; assistant book-keeper 
in the heavy wholesale house of Teller, Stoltz and 
Company. Rather tall than short, thin, and at this 
time a stoop in his walk that daily exercise did not 
prevent. Iron gray hair, closely cut, and the bald 
spot on his crown grew no smaller. His blue eyes 
were lifeless, cold in expression, as if calloused by con- 
stantly coming in contact with endless rows of figures. 
His forehead was broad and good, so were the well-de- 
fined eyebrows, his nose aquiline, cheeks thin, an upper 
lip not too broad for the square chin ; his mouth, al- 
though formed in a classic curve, was devoid of the 
lines of smiles from many a pleasing trifle. Uncon- 
sciously to the possessor, it had grown into the very 
image of the hard lips of Mr. Teller. Over the face, as 
a mask, was the look of dogged endurance born from 
the soldier spirit of “ fighting it out on that line,” and 
with a firm front passing through the harshness of Mr. 
Stoltz without mortal injury to pride and self-respect. 

One might imagine that Lemuel was surly and cross 
as a companion, and for many a year the last desire of a 
sane person for an intimate friend. 

His home was three or four miles from his desk ; it 
was ugly, too ; abominably ugly. It cost him twenty 
dollars a month out of the fifty dollars he had in all ; 
ten of the remainder must go for coal and wood. If 
the summer’s saving in this item had not helped him 
out, he would have been in a sad way with all he had to 
do with his money. Neat he always was, if shabby. 


I THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 19 

But neat or otherwise, it was naught to his masters, if 
only the books were rightly balanced. 

Masters } 

Verily, in the strictest sense of the word ; and for 
him was no hope of demagogue taking him to help 
grind some political axe, because he was nothing — not 
worth a thought, much less a word. Were there not 
throngs like him .? If he left his desk, were there not 
scores eager to step into so good a place } — a place in 
the great house of Teller, Stoltz & Co. Yes, indeed. 

Society needed him not ; society thought less of him 
than of the nameless infant abandoned to perish in the 
“horrible street.” 

And day by day he plodded and toiled. 

When Mrs. Lemuel Gibbon had completed the vari- 
ous requirements of her poverty-stricken household it 
left her strength or mind for nothing farther by way 
of exertion, and many a light-footed, active woman had 
done this better. 

Going along in one rut for so many years had been 
wearing upon her ; its effect worse than for her 
husband. He was strong and dogged, she was weak ; 
he had the spirit to endure, she had become hopeless 
and despondent ; even to the last degree of weeping 
bitter tears of absolute wretchedness, if she did not 
complain. What good would that do } Her life and 
its environment she thought of with detestation. The 
load was heavy for her weak nature ; if beneath it she 
tottered and well nigh had dropped, the suffering was 
all her own. Friends she had none. Church none. 
The people about her in manners and daily walk and 


20 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


conversation a step above the slums, with untidy dress 
and clacking voices talking interminably, were worse 
than no society for her as poor as they. Her one 
comfort was her delicate boy, and there was a pang in 
that when she saw that he was like herself, a character 
poorly adapted to fight his way through the world. 

Sundays and holidays brought no respite, for these 
days Lemuel was irritable and unstrung from the 
nervous “winding up,” as he said, that carried him 
through seasons of labor at the store. Ill-tempered, 
ungracious, churlish, cross about the scanty cookery, 
sour and peevish about the expenses, silent of an 
evening. 

The poor woman never had a chance to tell out the 
thoughts unutterable of her full heart to any in this 
world. As to saying them in prayer, she “ knew ” the 
skies were closed to her, miserable. That she (work- 
ing so faithfully, dear saint !) was sinful, a miserable 
sinner, the theology she had learned convinced her 
beyond a doubt. 

The single “amusement” that came to her happened 
Sundays, when after dinner with Lemuel and little 
Ned she was carried off to a cheap resort, by means of 
an unclean, cold, over-crowded street car. The noise 
and jam of the flashy “hall” were detestable to her; 
likewise, the broad farce and the dramatic outrageous- 
ness which seemed to her to come from straying spirits, 
dancing, mocking upon the borders of an abyss. 

Often in the summer her husband would go to a base 
ball match, and this, to her gentle nature, was too 
wrong, too wicked to endure, as any other crime, lying. 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


21 


stealing, or any evil one might name, was disgraceful 
and to be avoided. 

The ultimate effect of the years that had gone was 
a morbid melancholy ; feeble battling in the dust-hidden 
arena of our nineteenth century coliseum had left their 
traces “on heart and brain.” Did she long to be at 
rest } Did the thought often come to her as the long 
sleepless nights wore on that one sharp, tiny cut, a few 
painless gasps and all would be over } Who would weep 
to find her still } There was fascination in the picture 
of relief. In her lonely hours she dwelt upon it more 
than was profitable for the health of a well-balanced 
mind. 

Alas ! that God’s own little ones toil along in wretch- 
edness, like the unhappy wife of Lemuel Gibbon. 

These miserables all look alike, but when the natu- 
ralist studies them by individual specimens of the spe- 
cies, there are to be found distinctive traits. Is there 
any scientist so profound that, like the Devonian fos- 
sils, he has been able to give these obscure types their 
place in the “ Continuity of Life } ” 

As a matter of private opinion it has been plainly 
expressed that these people go to prove in the first 
place that the theory of Evolution is unsatisfactory ; 
.and again, if we take the class as it stands, the theory 
is false ; for here they were created by the social law 
of our two or three centuries of civilization, and just 
here they stop short off, like a ail de sac. 

And let no Evolutionist, carried away by love of 
science, endeavor by Lemuel to prove the ultimate 
truth of the theory, for one exception to countless 


22 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


examples of the normal state of a species does not go 
to prove anything. Yet, again, Lemuel’s exceptional 
history will be taken up by the delvers in social science 
to prove both the truth of Evolution and the beginning 
of a New Era from this isolated example. 

* ^ ^ 

But here is Lemuel’s wife, making her few scanty 
preparations to visit in the country. That she was as 
tall as her husband one could see at a glance. Much 
toil and constant walking had given her hands with 
rough joints, and large feet. A form broad and flat, a 
long neck, a face gathering no fine ex^. session from a 
bright soul within ; a wide forehead, traces of pain 
in its slight frown ; sunken black eyes, a handsome 
nose, straight, with delicate nostrils ; a sad mouth, 
with the lips in a horizontal line, and a chin not un- 
beautiful, if somewhat square ; in its center a dimple 
time had not hurt, and no color in a complexion 
always white and clear. With a shadow of a chance 
the face might have been really a model of quiet love- 
liness. But there are so many faces of the same 
type. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE ARRIVAL. 

It was fully dark Wednesday evening before Amos 
Early’s wife and daughters in waiting heard the music 
of the sleigh-bells. 

While the girls, Betsy, Maria and Susan, flew to open 
the kitchen dour, their mother took a last look at the 
tea-table loaded with the best supper she could set 
forthj before she hastened to make the tea. 

Tise came promptly to take the team down to the 
barn, Gottlieb was milking, Crawford, Sax, Walt and 
Sam, who had been brushing up in expectation of the 
arrival, came tramp, tramping down the back stairs as 
their father in a glow of hospitality led the way into the 
warm kitchen from the cold stoop, followed by Lemuel, 
Tildy, Little Ned and the three girls who had welcomed 
their cousins outside. 

Bags and boxes were deposited in a corner to be out 
of the way for the moment. 

*‘Well, Aunt Early,” said Lemuel, as he grasped the 
hard hand of his kind aunt, ‘‘here we are again;” the 
care of his daily life vanished, and he laughed a jolly 
laugh, as one who has wandered in deserts and who has 
come home. 


24 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


“Yes,” said his aunt, who had given her niece a first 
hug and was now ready for her niece’s husband, “and 
now that you ’re here, I’ll just try and keep y’ till I see 
more color in both o’ your faces. I’ve my own opinion 
o’ that place, any way, and I don’t like to see you there. 
She referred to the city which she abhorred. Her 
sharp glance took in Tildy’s thin gloves and his care- 
worn face. 

He said with an involuntary sigh, “We have to make 
our living, — business is business.” 

“Yes,” she assented, with both his hands in her own 
for added emphasis, “an’ facts is facts: I’ve been 
oneasy about y’ for a long time. I’d say to m’self, ‘ I 
must git in an’ see Tildy,’ but some how I couldn’t git 
around to it. She’s alookin’ awful peekid.” 

“Hallo, Lem!” said his long, thin cousin Samuel, 
pulling him about by the shoulders. 

Two strong hands met in a mighty grip. (Probably 
in a case of that sort while both parties undergo the 
torture, both are too proud to admit it, or show it.) 

“Sam,” said his cousin, “you are growing up, by 
Jove I ” 

“That’s as sure as you live,” said Sam’s mother with 
pride in her voice, and through the noise of all moving 
about and talking at once. She held Tildy’s hat and 
waited for her to take off her cloak, while Susan took 
little Ned’s wrappings in the same good spirit of 
welcome. 

“ I’ve a job for you, Lem,” continued Sam as Lemuel 
hung up his own coat and hat, and threw an arm over 
his shoulder. Amos, already by the fire, had his pipe 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


25 


to stand between himself and starvation while he 
awaited the pleasure of the rest. 

“ Don’t you want to come and look at my speci- 
mens.?” said Sam. “I want you to label ’em for me.” 

“ Certainly, Sam,” began his cousin. 

“See here, Sam Early,” exclaimed Betsy, “you and 
your cabinet can wait. Let him alone till he gits into 
the house, can’t you .? ” 

“Come, come!” said Amos, “I’m as hungry as a 
bear. Let’s have supper.” 

“ Of course we will, Amos,” said his wife, and in the 
bustle of the other boys welcoming the cousins, and 
in all getting around the table, individual words were 
lost, saving and excepting that Lemuel assured Sammy 
that he would put his cabinet in good shape for him. 

Lemuel was not selfish. While the supper went on 
and all were talking, he, now that he was cared for and 
comfortable, allowed his eyes to take good note of his 
wife’s face. It was the first time in years, so much had 
she become a matter of course in what was all so 
forlorn and wanting in any redeeming joy or pleasure. 
Had he suffered.? What of her.? He must needs 
quickly turn his thoughts from the hopeless, enduring 
unhappiness of that face ; for an instant he shut his 
eyes, and at once banished for the time everything but 
the comfort of being one in this scene of light, warmth, 
plenty and mutual love. 

Uncle Amos asked questions and answered them; 
at the same time doing with enthusiasm his duty as 
host. 


26 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


Aunt Early equally as well discharged her part as 
hostess, keeping watch upon the plate of ^‘that boy” 
to see that it was well filled ; and for quite other rea- 
sons, a sharp eye on Sam, to see that he had no 
chance for any of his pranks that night. 

Susan, as a general thing, came in for her mother’s 
care, but to-night Sam and Susan were safe from each 
other, and Gottlieb was safe from Sam. Aunt Early 
almost wished Lem could arrive every day. 

What a world of all sorts of news and events to talk 
over ; old time friends and neighbors of Tildy, and a 
word for the old soldier life, and several words for 
Sammy’s school with its “splendid” teacher, a glance 
at the church with its pastor, who was just the mildest 
man; “but, sir, he is deep, too, a fine scholar, ought to 
have heerd ’im Sunday. Best sermon I ever knew any 
one to preach in our church, — an hour long, — but he 
put as much into it as some would in two hours. It was 
about ‘God’s judgments on the disobedient.’” 

“And he is eloquent, too,” quoth Susan. 

“ But come,” says Aunt Early, “now you all go into 
the other room.” 

Tise and Gottlieb had already taken their way to the 
barn to lock up for the night. 

The daughters of the house were about to expostu- 
late against leaving the work for their mother, but she 
gave them no time. 

“ Go in an’ visit,” she said, “ I’ll have * that boy ’ 
help with the dishes. After that, there’s nothing more 
to do to-night.” 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


27 


** Do you let Uncle Amos smoke yet ? ” said Lemuel, 
with his pipe and tobacco-bag in his hand and glancing 
over to the clock-shelf. 

Uncle Amos answered that question for himself by 
turning his smiling face from his wife to the clock 
and his old arm-chair from the table, the better to rise 
from it and get the pipe and tobacco laid on one ex- 
tremity of the shelf, as if to support the camphor bottle 
on the other. 

“ Don’t stay out here three hours,” advised Betsy, as 
she gazed significantly at the pipes. 

“Ma, you’d better let me help you,” said Maria, 
whose round face was dutifully bent to a careful gather- 
ing up of the knives. 

But a chorus of voices leaving the room and a shake 
of her mother’s head decided her to follow. 

The two men drew near the cook-stove and with 
exact care scraped out their old black — I should have 
said, their beautiful brown — pipes, filled them to a 
requisite degree of compactness, burnt off the brim- 
stone from a match, and then lighted up in a famous 
style, and were soon in that state of exquisite bliss 
known only to smokers. 

Aunt Early set aside a pan or so from her work-table 
and talked with the tranquil smokers at intervals, as if 
waiting for something. At last she said, “ I do wonder 
where ‘that boy ’ can be.” 

He was always slow and Amos was so cosy he dreaded 
to go out after his pipe drew so perfectly, and a fine 
cloud was forming like a halo about his head. 

“ I verily believe,” said the good woman, turning back 


28 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


the cuffs of her black cashmere gown, “ that I hear him 
up-stairs now. Call ’im, can’t ye, pa 1 ” 

She did not allow her conscientious scruples concern- 
ing swear words to stand too strongly in the way of 
allowing another to use them for her in a case of neces- 
sity like the present; but then pa didn’t think as she 
did any way, so it might not be wicked for him. 

“ Gottlieb ! oh, Gottlieb ! ” called Amos. 

The boy must have been ready to come, for, after a 
shuffle on the dark stairs he pushed open the door and 
stepped into the kitchen. His fair complexion, gene- 
rally invisible, was now pink and shining ; his short, 
broad form was draped in a Prince Albert coat of some 
blue color ; about his neck was tightly wound, three or 
fo-ur times, a red woollen scarf, and on his head was a cap 
of shaggy fur, whose sole merit was that it warded off 
the cold : neither could the cold and snow reach his feet, 
expansive as they were ; for, as usual, he had bootlegs 
outside, and if one pair of hose could keep out frost, he 
had no faith in that supposition and had put on three. 

Now, where are you goin ’ } ” said Aunt Amos from 
her work-table, and in a sharp voice expressive of 
disgust. 

The boy ducked his head and thumbed the paper 
cover of a thick music-book beneath his left arm. He 
muttered a few words. 

‘‘Singin’ school! Who said to-night was Friday?” 
demanded Aunt Amos, looking out over the tops of 
her glasses. ‘‘This is Wednesday: who said it was 
Friday ? ” 

“Tise, he said so, — he make foolings.” Gottlieb 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


29 


looked at the men by the stove as if for information ; 
then again ducked his head, from which he soon began 
to remove his fur cap. 

‘‘That’s a joke on you, Gottlieb,” said Uncle Amos. 
“ Is Tise here ? ” he demanded, so that he need not 
seem to encourage unseemly mirth at the boy’s expense. 

“ Tise has gone by Peter’s,” said Gottlieb. 

Aunt Amos looked severely grave to hear that her 
hired man had joined his boon companions in a saloon, 
but was used to it. Tise had learned to drink in the 
army and had persevered with a regularity that would 
have been praiseworthy in any laudable pursuit. 

“ Well,” said she, “ take off your coat and help me 
do up this work. Friday night you can go, and don’t 
you let Tise fool you again.” 

Gottlieb doffed his scarf ; then in a length of time that 
precluded any possibility of aught else in transit, swal- 
lowed a fine large section of pie and a bit of cheese. 
In wondrous short order, seeing that Aunt Early held 
the helm, the table was cleared, the dishes washed and 
placed for breakfast, the tea-kettle emptied and hung 
away in the pantry, the dish-pan beside it, the chairs 
in order ; and so was Gottlieb free, and Aunt Early 
with Uncle Early and Lemuel joined the family in the 
parlor. 

When the good-nights had been said Lemuel’s 
thoughts went back to the contrast between his lot 
and the cheerful content of even this one evening. 
He had ills in a variety; did his wife likewise suffer.? 
He was sure that she did. Busy in thinking, without 
a word he said the prayer he did too often as a formal 


30 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


habit and was quickly in bed. He did not move. 
Tired herself, his wife noted the homely luxuries of the 
pretty room, and her heart was full of rest and thanks- 
giving that this visit had come to them. 

Quickly she was asleep. Hours after she awakened 
in a flood of moonlight in lambent white sheen falling 
over her low bed. The room was transformed into a 
nook in a cloud ; there were common objects by day 
now invested with new and unthought-of beauty. 

The face beside her own was .turned to the bright- 
ness, upon that face glistened crystal drops as of a 
tired child who has mourned, cried itself to sorrowful 
slumber. 

She softly laid her hand on her husband’s pillow. 

The pillow was damp with his tears. 


CHAPTER VI. 


IN THE MORNING. 

** Did you sleep last night ” he said. 

They had but opened their eyes to the day when Sam 
beat a roll-call on the door of their room. 

To stop the ceaseless noise they were making haste to 
open. “Pretty well,” said she guiltily. “ I had a deuce 
of a time getting to sleep,” said Lemuel, brushing his 
hair. “ See here, Mattie, take this ; you and the girls 
may want to buy something ; you know I’d be glad to 
give you more if I had it.” 

He pushed it into her hand. As if to avoid a reply he 
took up his coat, opened the door to Sam, when both 
went down to the kitchen and thence out to the barn 
before breakfast. His wife holding “this” in her left 
hand while fastening on her collar saw that it was a five- 
dollar bill. 

How kind at heart he was. She could understand 
what that money meant to him. It, in truth, left him 
a solitary five-cent piece. Out of money, he must plod 
along on foot to the store, cold and dark as it was in 
the street-cars lined with soaking, muddy hay. 

No more money for him until the “Fifteenth,” rule 
of Teller, Stoltz & Co., and business was business. 
Again, he had small chance for luncheon ; in the army 


32 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


he had staved off hunger with hard tack and survived 
it. His wife wondered if it would once more be his 
diet. Very plain to understand, as he coiild not eat 
food from a pail, or a newspaper, however tempting 
cold bread and meat might be in that shape. Anyway, 
how could he buy hard tack from the first to the 
fifteenth and no money Poor Lemuel; dear, kind, 
true-hearted man. He did love her; even when so 
churlish. Poor comrade. She would be as brave as 
he was, if it was no effort to plan how to do it, as she 
stood there looking at that precious bill, in that warm, 
sunny room with its east and south windows showing a 
winter landscape so lovely that the last look at her bill 
was one of contempt that life must be arranged on a 
hard cash basis. 

Lemuel went down to the barn ; the morning air was 
keen and frosty. He saw Sam’s doves, laughed with 
little Ned at the pigs and the funny new calf. 

Ned went with the boys to help water the horses, but 
Lemuel was already cold ; his neat coat was very thin ; 
he would return to the house. 

There was his wife. Over her head and shoulders 
was Aunt Early’s thick shawl. 

He stepped more quickly to be with her. 

“ Lemuel,” said she with a movement he did not 
understand until she had left the bill in his pocket. 
“ Lemuel, I won’t have this money. Don’t you suppose 
I can count as well as you } Oh, my dear ! I think you 
are as brave and noble a man as God ever made ; I do, 
indeed.” 

“Tut, tut. Rosy,” he said — it was an old pet name, 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


33 


in oblivion for many a year. She looked up into his 
face and an old smile, forgotten, too, for many a year, 
broke over her face, and taking him under the folds of 
that ample shawl both walked on together. 

Thanksgiving in the country would be a tame day 
without its church service. 

In the family of Amos Early, one to have stopped at 
home indifferent to the calls of the church would have 
been regarded as a rank unbeliever, infidel, or what- 
ever name told of absolute unworthiness 

Dinner was the climax of the day ; Betsy was this 
year the one to stay at home to attend its multiform 
demands. 

The rest of the family in due season started off on foot 
for the half-mile walk to the simple church. From the 
four cross-roads vehicles of all sorts were now approach- 
ing the church — road-carts, with the bone-bound chested 
farmer’s son, sitting stoop shouldered for all his health 
and strength; again, an erect figure bowling along 
over the hard road ; then a lumber wagon crowded 
with its bundled-up load, with their shawls, scarfs, fur 
caps, quite shaggy enough to suit the old weather- 
beaten faces showing below ; now a family carriage 
packed full of girls and boys, with the baby on 
mother’s lap, and father driving ; following this an old 
‘^one-hoss shay,” in it an ancient couple to suit its 
antiquity. 

Flying along the road now came Gabriel Strong’s 
fast horse with pride, dragging the road-cart behind it. 
One passenger was Gabriel just back from New York. 
Sue was by his side, dressed in a suit from the city 

{ 


2 


34 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


with not an item about it, hat included, to shock those 
dreadful people who will persist in their sentimental 
nonsense concerning ‘‘Symphonies of color.” Sym- 
phonies ! Shades of Beethoven and ministers of art 
defend us ! A dress, a gown, a paltry something to 
stand between us and the weather, the road, the rain — 
a symphony ! I 

The clear-toned bell bade all to hasten, the ones on 
foot as well as the riders of every sort. A comfortable 
crowd of happy, prosperous people from first to last, 
who, together, had labored to reclaim the country from 
the wilderness, and now almost equal in wealth and 
altogether equal in social life, if no one ever seemed 
to think, or care, or speak of that, were enjoying the 
rewards of a well-spent life. There was a scene of 
cordial greeting and mutual friendliness that any one 
would delight to share, when the people came into the 
vestibule of the church and waited for a moment to 
shake hands and speak as they met. 

Since the days of Lemuel Gibbon’s rural life in 
England, in no like exhibition of mutual good will 
had he shared. His bankrupt father, who had squan- 
dered more money than would have served to buy out 
and out a dozen such townships, had died, leaving 
for his unfortunate son debt and the disgrace of it, 
aside from the less desirable heritage of paternal haish- 
“"iiess as a remembrance. Lemuel did not forbear to 
look back bitterly at what might have been. 

To his wife, reared in her town loneliness, from the 
poor wtirk girl, to the despised position of wife to a 
poorer nilan, valueless to his community (save for the 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


35 


brief years he had served as an iron-nerved soldier) the 
sight of beaming faces about her, quite often in good 
will for her, as her people introduced the city strangers, 
was a marked epoch in her life. 

Too soon the congregation were in their seats and the 
mild-faced minister, with a voice of love, began the open- 
ing prayer — -a gentle, a softening, a loving prayer. Be- 
fore it, care sunk down out of sight ; Lemuel gave him- 
self up to worship, and his wife forgot her morbid 
imaginings. 

Susan sat beside Gabriel Strong in the choir ; there 
were seven other singers whose united efforts in sev- 
eral ‘‘ set pieces ” were distracting beyond description. 
Even Gabriel, who had been to New York City during a 
huge “musical festival” (equally distracting in its way), 
remembered choice bits of quartette and solo singing 
and a lone morsel of a tiny chorus from the general 
uproar ; and resolved in the first place to quit the choir, 
and in the second to talk to Susan with the delicately- 
hinted object of inducing her to reform her style of 
singing. 

Gabriel was innocently about to launch into troubled 
waters. Had he experienced the meaning of “heart- 
ache ” he would have been wiser. Susan, in the mean- 
time, glanced over the congregation and attended upon 
the minister by fits and starts, really, for the most of 
the time, thinking of what she was going to give as her 
sentiment at dinner, and how she was going to be very 
careful of her voice so as to be able to sing about the 
stars in heaven that evening, with due effect. 

When at the end, all the people rose and united their 


36 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


voices in the doxology, Lemuel did not dare to join with 
them, but for him it was a time of breaking down of old 
coldness. Gabriel Strong, in the fullness of his favored 
lot in a world of sorrow, felt the thrill of that soul- 
stirring harmony more deeply than any pleasure he 
could connect with the musical remembrances absorbing 
his nimble brain during the time of the service. 

With Susan at his side he had no thought of the rap- 
idly-scattering crowd. His road cart left all behind and 
when he turned the corner to take the road to her 
father’s farm it was quite singular to observe how his 
horse fell into a slow walk. Upon it Sam made com- 
ments for the benefit of Ford and Walt. 

But Gabriel had something to say very important ; 
how could he say it whirling through the air with keen 
wind cutting his face. Sam should have been more 
considerate. 

The clear voice of Gabriel Strong was especially 
soft as he said, “Susan, I’m going to leave the choir.” 

“What for.?” 

“Don’t like it. You come, too.” 

“No, sir. What would I leave the choir for.?” Susan 
tightened up the fur band at her throat and then pushed 
her hands in her new tan-colored kid gloves down into 
her muff, as if bracing herself for an encounter requiring 
as much logic as ready wit. “What’s the use of sing- 
ing if you don’t make any music .? ” demanded Gabriel. 
He turned his head at the sound of a familiar voice near 
by. The three brothers of Susan. 

“ Hurry home to dinner. Sue,” called Sammy slacken- 
ing his rapid walk an instant. He looked very happy. 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 37 

Music ! said Susan, cool to her loving brother, 

Humph!” 

Don’t be angry, Susan,” urged her companion. “I 
just want to ask you if there is any good in our singing 
a lot of stuff that sounds like sixty.” 

^‘Who said thatV demanded she, frigidly. 

“Ij-^jrit.” 

“You’re rnighty critical since you come home from 
New York.” 

“Not so” — he began. 

Hastily she went on. “Next thing you’ll be telling 
me that there’s no music in, ^ When the stars shine.’ ” 

“Well, there aint,” he cheerfully admitted, quite com- 
placent to have so admirable an opening for what he 
had to “hint,” as it were, thrust upon him. 

“Very good, Gabriel Strong,” said Susan Early. “If 
you don’t like to hear me sing, don’t listen, that’s all, 
for I shan’t leave the choir, and I’ll sing, ^ When the 
stars ’ if I want to.” 

“What’s the good of flaring up.?” said Gabriel; “I 
know something’s wrong in it. I like to hear you sing, 
of course ; you know I like to hear you sing.” 

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Susan, who did not 
take as kindly to instruction as many a fine lady who 
smiles at plain criticism from her friends to her face, 
roundly expressed, expecting to return the same when 
demanded and deemed as mutual favors, “I’ll tell you 
what it is,” said Susan, “since you began to go to New 
York nothing here is good enough for you. I expect 
before long to hear you say that I am not the one for 


38 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


you, and that Fd better hunt up some one else and let 
you go.” 

‘‘If you want to think I’m as base as that,” said 
Gabriel, deeply hurt, “I’ve nothing to say.” 

“ Anyhow, you find fault with everything,” said Sue. 

“ Why, Susan ! ” 

“ I do hate folks that can never be satisfied,” said 
foolish Sue. 

“ I despise folks who don’t know good from bad,” he 
said shortly. 

“ That means me,” she said. 

“ Oh, if you have a mind to apply everything to 
yourself, I can’t help it,” he answered. 

It was at this stage of the conversation that the 
yellow cart pulled up by the kitchen stoop, and without 
another word Susan jumped out, and was in the house 
in a hurry. 

Gottlieb this time was on hand and rattled the cart 
down to the barn so vigorously that Gabriel expected 
to see it knocked into splinters by the heels of “ Flying 
Dutchman,” his horse. 

Once well in the house he was received with cordi- 
ality, but Susan, whose eyes shone, and whose flushed 
face told of anger, was coldly polite. At dinner 
Gabriel was wretched beneath the constant flow of 
his ready wit and laughter. 


CHAPTER VII. 


DINNER ! 

To the unsophisticated mind of the youthful Gottlieb 
dinner upon the day of Thanksgiving was wholly want- 
ing in traditions of any sort. All the morning had he 
worked for Betsy, who had made close observations 
with conclusions in accordance with her data that a 
boy was contented and happy only while eating ; also, 
to get the full use of a boy’s talents it was necessary 
to fee4 him. She fed her aide-de-camp. He had 
done nobly — beaten eggs, prepared vegetables, carried 
things. Betsy was well served, Gottlieb was happy. 
If the consumption of half a Chicken left from the 
chicken pies, blocks of mince, apple and pumpkin pies, 
cold ham in nice lean scraps, a handful of raisins, an 
orange, a half lemon with sugar, a lot of chocolate, a 
handful of lump sugar, a doughnut, a slice of cake, 
a whole leg of turkey, besides apples with Tise in the 
early morning, and a substantial breakfast — I say if 
the consumption of these items would not serve to 
keep any boy going, Betsy did not know it, and she 
was satisfied with her success. 

Dinner he declared was no good for him ; he had had 
to eat all he could eat. To skate as long as daylight 
lasted was his earnest wish, to which Betsy offered no 


40 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


objection. Ned was of the same mind, but having as 
yet the hope of gastronomical joys to come, skating 
might be postponed. 

Tise felt bashful about making his appearance at 
state dinners. After an early luncheon he made 
quick time in arriving at his favorite resort, Peter 
Heinze’s saloon. 

Peter was a politician ; friends from a natural good 
heart with every one, to the extent of taking to his 
affections some Irishmen — -as the County Treasurer 
and Tise himself, not a bad fellow in his way ; but 
there is a strong probability that motives of policy in 
the Irish friendships were the governing motives of 
Peter’s conduct and general course with regard to 
them. 

At any rate, Tise felt quite at home in Peter’s saloon 
(quite too much at home. Aunt Early said to him more 
than once, with undisguised acidity in look and tone). 
There he would sit in idle j oy, and play cards and drink 
beer till any hour ; then go home, uncertain as to way, 
unsteady as to step. For the rest of the week after he 
would be useless to himself and every one else. 

It was a problem that Tise, with a better chance now 
than Amos Early had when a young man, associated 
his greatest happiness with idleness and delights of 
unlimited beer. 

Aunt Early would worry about Tise later when she 
had time ; now, with her family about the loaded table, 
she was fully engaged. 

At the sight of turkey, goose, chicken, beef, ham, 
pork and beans, every farm vegetable, all sorts of side 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


41 


dishes, served on the long, daintily-spread table, Sam 
was in supreme bliss. Uncle Amos and Ford carved. 
Aunt Early poured out the tea; the girls passed the 
various side dishes as it was convenient. 

They were not too refined to once in a while remark 
on the beauty of the cookery. If the boys did not do 
it justice, and the girls in passive enjoyment gave due 
attention to favorite dishes, and if Lem and Tildy and 
little Ned did not declare that no dinner ever was so 
delicious, and if Uncle Amos did not enjoy it to see 
the rest so glad of his hospitality. Thanksgiving dinners 
where there are peace and plenty are greatly overpraised 
by those who love the institution. 

At last came the pudding, conquered, and was gone ; 
and mince pie and pumpkin. 

Susan took away the cloth, and brought on dessert : 
ice cream, nuts and fruit. 

^‘Now,” said she after resuming her chair, “we call 
for ^sentiments’ from each and all, instead of stiff, for- 
mal toasts, or speeches, — but speeches are in order, if 
an}^ will favor the company with a speech so much the 
better. Applause comes next : some one applaud.” 

Some one did, coldly received ; applause from all at 
the same time in the midst of a ripple of merriment. 

As the afternoon sun shone in through the windows 
of the large kitchen, inviting a lover of beauty to gaze 
miles away over the white hills and gentle slopes of 
valley and meadow, the picture was one to delight the 
most indifferent. Within it was not ugly nor common- 
place. The white floor of bare boards was not so bad ; 
there was some charm about the warm, shining range : 


42 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


the work-table piled up with dishes was in no disorder. 
The well-dressed company about the long dining-table 
were fine examples of that power behind the throne 
(of ambitious froth, and self-styled ^Teaders ” of the 
people,) that boded well for the permanence of Repub- 
lican ways and manners, and might have been a bright 
encouragement to those who look ahead only to anarchy 
with its consequent fatal end of Democracy. 

All this to show that from the depths of this Ameri- 
can kitchen poetry or eloquence need not be regarded 
as incongruous. 

Very often on Sundays, and other fit occasions, “ sen- 
timents” over fine cups of coffee were popular. “Pa, 
you must begin,” said Susan. 

“ Stop husband,” said his wife ; “ first I want each one of 
us to tell of something we have to be thankful for.” She 
mentally added that if Tise and “that boy ” had only kept 
in, what a good exercise this would have been for them. 

“Let’s hear from you, Neddy,” said Maria, “what 
have you to be thankful for } ” 

“ Cause I’m here,” said the lad promptly. 

“The dear child,” said Aunt Early, “just hear 
that, pa.” 

Amos laughed. “ Neddy ’s right. He ’s glad to be 
here, and we’re glad he ’s here, and I ’ll see that he 
stays as long as he can.” “ Yes indeed,” said all. “ What 
I ’m thankful for,” he continued, “is ma over there.” 

The girls and boys laughed a little at this, as if pa 
and ma were not matters of course to them, — young 
and thoughtless boys and girls, — young men and maid- 
ens more strictly speaking. 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


43 


I ’m thankful, too, for you, Amos, and for these 
dear children all about us. I ’m thankful that all of us 
are united in this dear old home. But if I should begin 
to tell of my causes for thanksgiving they would be 
more in number than the sands of the sea.” The good 
old lady spoke fervently ; she ceased as one who ends a 
prayer. 

An appropriate pause ensued. 

Crawford was next. “ I,” said he, am thankful for 
all, that wheat.” 

The girls sought silent consolation from each other’s 
glances, as ones in search of new ideas, not those every- 
day, practical subjects, save Betsy, who said, like 
Ford, am thankful fire has not destroyed what cyclones 
have spared.” 

“ Good,” said all, at a point so well put. 

A patter of nut-shells in glass plates for a moment 
alone broke the silence ; then it was Gabriel Strong 
who spoke : 

“ I am thankful, — ” he began, 

Sammy found a chance to say a word for his favorite, 
and thus interrupted : 

“ Gabe is thankful for the girl he left behind him.” 
(Sue, of course, when he went to New York.) 

Sammy took jokes for their merits, with eye single 
to the fun of their application. It was the sweeter to 
him that Gabriel was mute, and that Sue became over- 
red and angry at a distance too wide to box her saucy 
brother’s ears. The hearty “ Ha ! ha ! ” of the company 
was zest to Sam’s mirth, so on the whole Lemuel’s 
next fell flat. 


44 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


I,” said he, “ am thankful to have my place in the 
store.” 

“I,” said cousin Tildy, ‘‘am like Ned, thankful to be 
with you all to-day.” 

Then said Maria, “ I am thankful for the country at 
peace.” 

“ Sure enough,” said her mother, to whom war was a 
horror. 

“And I,” said Sax, “am thankful for my new 
bicycle.” 

“ Huh ! ” said Walt, “ I am thankful for Zep.” 

Then Sam added earnestly that he was thankful for 
his dinner, when his mother became sad at the levity 
of her youngest son, and in fact at his two brothers 
also. 

Betsy said something to the effect that Sam’s Thanks- 
giving must be in a measure dampened in its ardor by 
his small (comparatively small) capacity to enjoy his 
dinner with what he desired to comsume — this remark 
being received with laughter, while Sam muttered that 
he guessed he was all right. 

Sue was last, and made haste to end this part of the 
programme, so as to enter upon what was more to her 
taste ; that is, the “ sentiments.” 

“I am thankful,” she said, “well — I guess, because 
I’m not a boy'' 

The sarcastic glance at Samuel, which came with 
these words seemed to throw that youth into an ecstasy 
of mirthful ebullition, so that his mother nudged him 
secretly and urged him to behave. 

But in the din and chatter ensuing Gabriel Strong 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


45 


felt that his lot was not a “ happy ” one, for Susan 
noticed him not, neither did she address to him a single 
word. 

Fresh, hot coffee was now served in whitest china for 
the closing of the feast to begin. 

With a form of interest, each occasionally remem- 
bered his coffee by sipping a few drops, but the true 
business of the hour was to listen to sentiments uttered 
standing, and reply to them, or discuss them, as one 
pleased. 

Crawford began promptly. 

“The President of the United States.” (Applause). 

Then Lemuel. 

“The Queen of England.” (He would have said 
“Her Majesty, the Queen,” but adapted his loyalty to 
Republican ears in a form not objectionable, as he 
modestly hoped). 

Likewise great applause. 

From Amos Early, who did not stand on account of 
his knee. 

“The soldiers who helped to preserve the govern- 
ment; we can’t do too much for them.” 

Studious, thoughtful Maria who read the papers said, 
rising slowly and with dignity, when the talk after her 
father’s sentiment was ended : 

“ I quote from Plato’s Republic^' said Maria ; “ a grand 
study for everyone in this country; my sentiment is 
this: ‘If the citizens of a Republic neglect their 
political duties, they must consent to be governed by 
inferiors.’” 


46 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


Applause with enthusiasm. Maria felt that she was 
appreciated. 

It was Betsy who came next. In her love of epigram 
the sacrifice of truth to point her sentiment would 
be declared a fact by some dissenters who have no 
taste for poetical justice. 

When the faces up and down the table were turned 
to her in expectation, with the round lines of her face 
well set in an effort to look stern, she said : “ The 

women of America, who have no rights that the white 
man is bound to respect.” 

Why, Betsy ! ” said her mother. The rest laughed 
and applauded, but Betsy had been in earnest and sat 
down to sip her coffee in silence. 

Sax said, *‘Work and Win.” 

Walt, “Never give up the ship.” 

Sam stood up with a sober face which convinced no 
one of his true gravity, while his mother cast upon him 
a look of expostulation mingled with anxiety. He gave 
this as his sentiment, “The dying year,” and so sat 
down. From all save his mother this was received with 
peals of laughter. When Sam joined in he made some 
slight observation about talent thrown away. 

Now came Susan’s turn. With an air, said Sue, “As 
long as ' the stars shine in heaven afar ’ may the sweet 
influences of music never cease to ‘enlighten the 
world.’ ” 

Applause. 

“Amen,” said a low voice. 

But Sue was not ready to be good friends just yet. 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


47 


Little Ned was next, and he stood up and went 
through a school piece in a charming manner, proving 
that child as he was he was able to enter into the spirit 
of the proceedings. 

This led his mamma to timidly give as her sentiment, 
“Universal education, the keystone in the arch of a 
new civilization.” 

Received with great praise of the quiet being who 
was never supposed to be in the least “clever.” 

Gabriel was last and said, “The Day we celebrate. 
Let us one and all rejoice and be glad as becomes a 
a people so richly endowed with heaven’s choicest bless- 
ings.” 

This appropriate finale brought Gabriel his mead of 
praise. 

Sue’s momentary vexation was gone, but true to a 
girl’s perverseness, as they now left the table, instead 
of going with that handsome Gabriel to their favorite 
nook in the parlor, the brilliant eyes of her lover 
searched vainly for look or word, — for her pretty head 
she turned the other way. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


“ Let us go out to the gymnasium,” said Gabriel to 
the boys. 

They agreed instantly, and the black coats were soon 
out of the way of the busy housemaids. With so many 
hands to hasten the work. Aunt Early’s kitchen was in 
order in short metre. 

“Ma,” said Maria, ‘Tet us all go and take a walk.” 

“ On the meadow,” said Betsy. 

“The boys are all in the barn,” said Sue. 

They were bundling up in scarfs and wraps to walk 
“just around the place.” “No good to get out hats and 
best cloaks for that,” said Aunt Early. 

“ They are running the risk of breaking their necks 
on the trapeze, or getting black eyes from those ugly 
boxing-gloves. Ugh ! how I hate ’em.” 

“ Me, too ; ” said Aunt Early. “ We will walk in the 
meadow till we see the boys cornin’ back to thcv house.” 

They did so. Tildy, Susan, Betsy, Maria, Aunt 
Early, in grotesque hoods and shawls. The clear air 
would be with them, the declining sun cast long shad- 
ows, as in a scattering, broken line, with need of care 
to keep a footing where the snow had blown off the 
frosty grass, they went down the hill toward the meadow 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


49 


and were soon lost to sight by a turn in the road where 
it curved around the little barn, long since a ruin. 

Several rods west of the house, in the great hay barn, 
the boys fared yet better. 

“ Oh, I say, Sam,'’ said Lemuel, is this your gym- 
nasium, then } ” 

Walt, Sax, Sam, Ford, together with cousin Lemuel 
and slim “ twelve-year old ” Ned, were gathered in the 
broad open space left by the immense double doors now 
wide open. Amos had said that he was “tired” and 
would lie on the lounge to read the paper. “Oh, pa,” 
had said his daughter Sue, “that means a nap.” Per- 
haps it did, but Amos had remained up to the house. 

“ The barn was all the place we had,” said Sam, “ but 
it does well enough. We left the hay out of this cor- 
ner. Here’s a fine place to swing by your knees.” 

In less than a second Sam was suspended in mid air 
from a trapeze, and hung head downward swinging to 
and fro in a manner frightful to behold. Walt and Sax 
vaulted into the bars. Ford came to the front with 
arms full of boxing-gloves. One pair he proceeded to 
pass over to Lemuel. 

“Ow ! ” said little Ned. 

The boy jumped as one who had seen a ghost when 
he was neither in a state of expectation, nor yet of 
preparation to behold that much-talked-of individual. 

The faces of the boys were turned down from above. 
Ford and Lem stopped short with their begloved hands 
well out in one of the positions of boxing. 

“Hello, Dutchy!” said Ford. “How came you here 
in that white shirt and your Sunday pants } ” 


50 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


Gottlieb moved out of his hay covert and said with a 
grin, “ Broke trough.” 

‘*Did, hey.^” said Ford, sparring a bit. ‘‘You look 
red and warm ; been up on the bars } ” 

The boy grinned again but made no other answer. 

They left him to his whispered communications with 
Ned, and in the excitement of boxing forgot the young- 
sters, Gottlieb sixteen and Ned twelve. 

Lemuel explained some new turns and twists that he 
understood. Gottlieb and Ned had a game all to them- 
selves, fine fun it was, too. Ned’s father heard a famil- 
iar giggle, and bending up his head just in time to catch 
Ford’s blow under his chin, saw his son with Gottlieb on 
the bars. 

“Hang on tight,” he shouted, then he returned Ford’s 
blow straight from the shoulder, so that that brawny 
youth had to take time to pick himself up off the barn 
floor. 

Gabriel was going up a rope hand over hand : by this 
means he gained possession of a swinging affair de- 
scribed by the boys as the “high trapeze; ” it was twen- 
ty feet above the hay on the floor. Therein sat Gabriel 
like a cherub in the air above them. Four or five feet 
below this was a second affair of the same sort, and this 
hung from a beam five feet distant, in position to jump 
from one to the other, at a delicious risk of neck and 
limb at each bold, not to say fool-hardy, venture. 

To arrive at either trapeze hand over hand on the 
rope dangling from the lofty beams of the roof was no 
trick at all. 

Lem had to take off his boxing-gloves to show Walt a 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


51 


new wrist movement with the black and gilt Indian 
clubs. It should be explained that Lemuel’s daily noon 
visit to the gymnasium of the “ Y. M. C. A.” was a 
“ means of grace,” perhaps literally, that he improved 
to the utmost limit of possibility. It kept up the tone 
of his muscles, it was a relief and a change ; and, best 
of all, from that bit of regular practice he found a re- 
serve force to carry him through the confining rigor of 
ten hours a day at a desk. 

The barn was an airy theatre for amazing feats of 
strength and skill from the active gymnasts who had 
the floor. Yet how many things might happen. 

Suddenly Ned, from his high perch, called out impul- 
sively, ^‘Oh, papa, just see Gottlieb.” 

At the same instant, Gabriel, from above, exclaimed. 

Look out, there, you blockhead ! ” 

The faces below were turned up to see the boy. There 
on the second trapeze he stood^ stiff-soled, heavy boots 
included, on the well-waxed, slippery, polished pole that 
the boys grasped with their hands. 

He felt triumphant and said, in a proud tone, ‘‘ So it 
iss in de circus in Chermany,” simultaneously bending 
his body to swing rapidly. 

The rest were helpless and horror-stricken. What grip 
had thick boots on that slippery rung? No sooner 
had the boy uttered these words, than he lost his bal- 
ance and dropped down, to land with broken ankles, or 
any one of a dozen hurts to last for life. 

To see that nerveless lump coming down : Sam, or the 
boys — all of them — could have jumped. 

But Gottlieb ! ♦ 


52 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


Lemuel, quick and wiry, sprang to break the fall, if 
he were able ; for the boy of sixteen, within a stone, 
weighed as much as he did. 

Both rolled together in the dusty hay. 

Ned instinctively rushed to his father, who was already 
on his feet again. 

On the floor sat Gottlieb, with legs straight before 
him and uplifted hands, with his mouth open, as if 
dazed. 

“ Great Scott ! ” said Sam. 

‘‘Any bones broken, Lem ? ” said Ford. 

Lem said he was not hurt by the fall ; and the boy 
slowly, like an elephant, raised himself to an upright 
position. 

“ Sure you’re all there, Dutchy } ” said Sam. 

It was so much of a lark, and Dutchy had so much 
confidence in his “ staying ” powers, that he was already 
inclined to do his feat over again. 

“ Look here ! ” said Ford, sternly. “Till you get a 
little sense, j ust keep out of this place, will you ? Go 
into the house out of the cold.” 

“ Ach,” muttered Gotlieb, “that makes netting.” 

In a dejected air of defeat he moved to the door for 
his cap. Closely attended by little Ned, the two went 
up the road, having determined to explore the wonders 
of Gottlieb’s wood-house chamber. 

“ It ’s a wonder the boy had n’t broken his neck,” 
said Lem. Sam remarked that he did not see how 
Lemuel had got there so quick. Gabe, hanging by his 
knees from the same place, declared that the boy had 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


53 


no sense. They forgot the accident as the delights of 
training began now to open up in good earnest. 

Nothing would have called them away from these 
sports but the keen desire to try Walt’s new Winches- 
ter rifle before it grew too dark to do so. 

It looked as if it were no trick for each one to hit the 
mark. 

On hand again were Gottlieb and Ned. However, 
there were no further accidents. It is true that Sam 
risked something in that line when he sent Gottlieb to 
find the bullets. This was avoided by Lem’s neglecting 
to fire for the time, the boy presenting a ludicrous spec- 
tacle crawling about in the grass on his hands and 
knees. 

But the night drew on apace ; the sun was out of 
sight, and in the great twilight stillness the sound of 
fresh young voices in eager words concerning biceps, 
grand shots and all that, — we repeat, the sound of these 
bright voices had in it a musical delight ; at the same 
time there was in it all a hidden significance almost 
pathetic. 

Waiting, even now at the house, and fine for the 
evening, were the other half of the family who cap- 
tured these new-era adventurers with many a merry 
chiding. 

Ah, but where was Gabriel, asked a certain young 
lady, with a very blank face, of her dutiful brother Sam- 
my. Answer brief and to the point that Gabe had 
gone home. "‘Too bad,” said Aunt Early, sitting there 
in the parlor in a chair of state, “but we must n’t keep 
him all day; his mother will be lonely.” Susan went 


54 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


to sing her song and did bravely. She came oiit strong, 
so to speak, on the finale, only a trifle sharper than her 
usual “reading.” 

She wondered if Gabriel was so awfully anxious to 
“visit with his mother.” Secretly she scorned the idea : 
pray hadn’t he “visited with his mother” for twenty- 
five years ? 


CHAPTER IX. 


A MYSTERY. 

“I DECLARE, Susan,” exclaimed Betsy the next day at 
noon as the two girls were doing up the after-dinner 
work, “ what is the matter with pa and ma } They have 
been whispering together all day.” 

“And ma acts as if actually afraid Td badger her 
into telling me, as she knows well enough I can,” said 
Sue. “Here’s pa, now. Hallo, pa, 1 know something 
and I won’t tell what,” said she shaking out her dish- 
towel with a snap. Their father stumped about the 
room to hunt for his whip and gloves. “That boy” 
was holding Zep before the door. 

“ Ef you gals think I’m agoin’ to tell you anything 
else,” said he with his grizzly old face not at all firm, 
and an entreaty in his manner as one who begs to be 
let off easily, “ I won’t do it, that’s all.” 

“You’re going to take Tildy and ma to town,” said 
Betsy. 

“ You and ma and Tildy are going over to the quarry 
to tea,” said Sue. 

“You are going to get up a surprise party for us,” 
said Betsy. 

“Guess agin,” said their father, as he hastened to 


56 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


leave them, having bundled himself up for a drive in 
the sharp air. 

His laugh was lost as the door closed behind him. 
His round old back was out of sight from the stoop 
before the girls had time to open the door. 

The mystery began in the morning, when pa and ma 
began to whisper in the pantry before breakfast. It 
kept on when Sammy came up from the post-office and 
informed them that Jim Sadler, the postmaster, had 
gone off and got married ; sly, wasn’t he } And was 
for closing up the office and going on to his wife’s farm 
only he was afraid it wouldn’t be straight. 

The mystery grew worse and worse ‘Tike the mea- 
sles,” Maria said, indignantly. “Only,” added Sue, 
“they couldn’t get it to come out.” 

It held its own against all assaults of the enemy 
through the rest of the week, even up to the next 
Wednesday. 

Such whisperings ; pa and ma had so much to talk of 
and so much to do, and how beautifully they would 
relapse into silence when one of their olive branches 
came in hearing range. Both boys and girls were fairly 
bewildered at this new turn. It was a matter of course 
for them to have little affairs of mysterious import ; but 
for pa and ma! 

Gabe was bright, said Sam, he could find out all 
about it in no time, but then he never came near them. 

Where was Gabe } 

And with the severe mien of a schoolmaster, Sam 
turned to Susan. Gabriel Strong had gone to town 
Sunday and was not at church. 

Poor Susan 1 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, S7 

Sam found out all about that for he went over to the 
quarry for the very purpose, but he did not explain. 

For once pa and ma were not to be coaxed nor teased 
into giving up to the young people. 

To us, favored of the oracle, there need be no mys- 
tery. It jnust be, indeed, our good fortune to follow 
pa and Zep on the very ride that caused such endless 
curiosity in pa’s family. 

With a crafty smile on his face, or such a part of a 
crafty smile as his honest features would admit, Amos 
drew up his lap robe, said Git up ! ” to Zep and dashed 
off — where } 

Of all places for him, good, honest deacon, where but 
to Peter Heinze’s saloon! 

And he did not go to find Tise. That worthy was 
even now at home trying to work under difficulties. 
His head was heavy (this was Friday) his eyes were red, 
and if he saw two of anything as often as one, he knew 
that he had no just cause to complain of them — his 
eyes — for if they had served him as he deserved, 
instead of proving to him the error of his ways by a 
two-fold view of his point of^ sight, they would have 
multiplied it by a hundred-fold. Tise was careless in 
his toilet, too, upon this auspicious morning. It were 
trite to remark that his rumpled coat might, as far as 
looks go, have been his bed-gown for any number of 
years, yet it excelled the broken-down hat on his head, 
as it also did the limp waistcoat once an object of vanity 
to the poor fellow. 

His temper generally uneven, was this morning only 
worse than the temper of his companion in arms, that 


58 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


is to say Gottlieb, who, very often cross and testy, was 
giving his slow assistance in the construction of a wood- 
sled down by the barn. 

It was a work beset with storms. More stupid than 
ever was Gottlieb. Tise was nervous and in haste. 
The boards would fall ; Gottlieb would lose the screws. 
If a board was sawed the edge was sure to be out of 
line. If Tise was loud in his wrath, Gottlieb was 
accustomed to it and chuckled to himself. If Tise 
broke out into sundry strong expressions the boy was 
too stupid and absent-minded to heed the Irishman’s 
anger. 

Placing his boards in position Tise sent Gottlieb to the 
house for the auger ; was it the fault of that innocent 
youth when, deluded by P'ord (this time), he returned 
grasping the monkey-wrench ? Vain to portray the 
silent look of what was intended to be scorn upon the 
white, demoralized face of Tise ; equally vain to repeat 
his words of poignant pity, rage, distress, disgust at the 
sight of that “down-right idiot.” 

Amos on the road, at this juncture might have heard 
an outburst of Irish indignation, well-supported by 
German expletives. He was by far too engrossed in 
his scheme to notice it. 

As a deacon Amos Early was aware that in going to 
a saloon he might compromise his good name. To-day 
he felt secure. 

As a place of political meeting “Peter’s” was 
popular. 

The town-hall was not. In the first place it was 
generally shut up. Peter’s place had never a like 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


59 


charge laid to its door; again, to go to the town-hall 
you had to put on your best coat, that was formal. It 
was not so at Peter’s. Then at the town-hall, if one 
desired the attention of the rest he stood up and made 
a speech. It was not so at Peter’s ; there, you all 
talked at once ; the man with the strongest lungs could 
have the floor if he persevered in his efforts to gain it. 

Peter himself was the leading politician of the 
county. However, this fact did not lift him up in the 
eyes of Amos Early. To his mind it was evidence 
prima facie that the fact of a man’s holding an office 
was all that was necessary to prove that he was not the 
sort of a man he ought to be. To go into a crowd of 
happy-go-lucky men and talk was in the nature of 
agreeable excitement in which the dark, dull town-hall 
could never have a part ; but to respect Peter as a man 
and a political leader was what no one in the county 
ever had a thought of doing. Yet they admitted that 
he was a good neighbor and not a bad citizen. The 
saloon they regretted. That it was a warm, jolly, 
cheerful, cosy place they sighed to admit. In fact the 
whole subject and its bearings, especially at election 
time, was complex ; a problem they could not solve. 

Why, oh why, as Gabriel would have said, for 
one thing, didn’t they coax Peter to exchange his saloon 
for a coffee-house, without any milk and water, thin 
faces, or cant about it? But, then, as a demand for 
that supply, a new generation of every-day idlers must 
have been reared to drink no beer, as well as the few 
who were not idlers and who enjoyed Peter’s goods. 


CHAPTER X. 


AMOS EARLY AS AN OFFICE-SEEKER. 

So, stamping his feet on the saw-dust of the floor was 
Amos. 

Zep he had securely fastened, buckled on her blanket, 
knocked off the balls of snow from his own boot-heels, 
and closed behind him the door of Peter’s “bower.” 

Thick about him hung evergreen wreaths for present 
decoration and anticipation of Christmas. The smell of 
stale beer and old tobacco-smoke pervading the shut-up 
air gave Amos no pang, for the army had hardened him 
to worse. 

As his eyes became accustomed to the difference of 
the light within and without, he was glad that for the 
time he was the only customer. 

Peter shook hands in an effusive greeting, which was 
honest as far as it went, but he felt guilty to meet the 
deacon, who was one of his constituents, and although 
on his red, round face was a smile, he felt truly down- 
cast, not to describe his chagrin by a harsher expression. 
He had certain reasons of his own for fearing that his 
good character was at stake, hence it was not strange 
that he was silent and ill at ease. 

He was in the frame of mind of a school-boy expecting 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


6l 


deserved punishment. I am afraid that while this 
good man, so far, was honest, as politicians go, he was 
in a clique that could be, to a very limited extent, named 
as a machine or an embryonic ring, of which, alas, Peter 
was boss ! and now, as innocent head of a few simple 
manipulations, solely to serve for personal ambitions 
not in the least culpable, poor Peter had been, as his 
bland political co-worker would have said, *Meft.” 

Amos had come to ask the services of a man of whom 
his opinion savored less of respect than submission to a 
necessary evil. In this position he was constrained to 
be awkward, too. Peter knew better than to ask his 
caller to drink anything. After the compliments of 
the day, he tried to look happy, and remarked as he 
arranged his glasses on a tray : 

Veil, dot vas a pad peesness ! ” 

Peter spoke of what was on his mind ; namely, his 
co-worker these latter months, the Irish County Trea- 
surer. 

“Wall, I dunno,” replied Amos, unbuttoning his great 
coat, as a man who has come to give out critical remarks 
on a subject requiring time. 

“ Y-a-a-s,” said Peter, referring to the bland Irishman, 
“ he vas immer zo giit,” and Peter thought how he was 
“left.” 

“ So he was,” assented Amos, speaking of the “ sly ” 
postmaster. 

“Aber,” said Peter, leaning on the counter, and 
speaking of the man he had loved and lost, “ Vhat vas 
dot for a rascal, eh ? ” 

“Oh, not so awful bad,” said Amos, raising up his 


62 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


eyebrows ; ^*why shouldn’t any one — you or I — do the 
very same thing, but — ” 

Peter shook his head and protested, his full blue 
eyes wet with tears. 

“ Mich } Ach, Gott in himmel, nimmer, nimmer : 
Ach, nein ! ” 

“Why,” said Amos, shoving his hands down into his 
pockets as he rested one elbow on the counter, “ why, 
Peter, it’s not so bad ; what’s the worst about it is for a 
fellow to leave us in the lurch so sudden.” 

“ Y-a-a-s, dot iss zo,” assented Peter again. “ He vas 
immer sooch a gut mann ; aber now he iss gone, ve 
can’t get dot six-hundret thaler, woll den : ve tont vant 
dot mann. Dot geld iss all gone — vhat shall ve do 
mit dot mann V 

Peter left his post behind the counter to go to the 
stove in the middle of the room and shake up the fire 
and came back to lean against his shelves behind the 
bar before Amos found words to ask his next question, 
which he did with caution, so that Peter might not dis- 
cover his ignorance. 

“ Sho ! ” said Amos. “ They can’t find him then ? ” 

Peter drew a deep, long breath, and shook his head 
and elevated his shoulders with a jerk and emphasized 
it all with a see-saw movement of his two out-spread 
palms. 

“Veil,” said he, “Nimmer haf veso gut a Treasurer. 
Now he hass — vhat you say, — skipped oudt mit dose 
six-hundret thaler. Dot geld iss gone. He iss gone 
auch : let him go, ve ton’t vant him, eh ? ” 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 63 

** That’s so,” said Amos. ‘‘He’s no good without the 
funds.” 

Peter’s face cleared in a manner to suggest scudding 
clouds over the face of the moon. 

“But,” said Amos, shifting his standing position to an 
upright, “about that postmaster’s agoin’ off an’ gittin’ 
married so sudden.” 

The countenance of the fat man behind the bar grew 
sad again, as one belonging to a man whose administra- 
tion is about to be universally impeached. 

“Y-a-a-s, dot vas pad; dot make blenty droubbles, 
too, mit mich.” 

“ Got anybody to put in ? ” said Amos shortly ; but 
this only because he was really so breathlessly anxious. 

Peter could not know that. He sadly attributed the 
manner of his influential constituent to utter disaffec- 
tion. He said persuasively, “ Pretty soon ve must find 
some pody. Aber dere iss no von. Oh, ja, dot make 
much droubbles.” 

Peter picked up his long pipe with an air of melan- 
choly. Amos began to think his case was gained, but 
not to seem over anxious he said stolidly, “ It’s mighty 
bad for us to think that any moment we may be left 
without a postmaster. Do you remember Lem Gib- 
bin .? ” 

“ Oh, y-a-a-s ; ” said Peter, fingering his box of to- 
bacco. “ Vas he in te var ? ” 

“ Same one. Now you see he’s a likely young feller, 
an’ bein’ as his wife’s sickly — Miss Gibbin that is — 
perhaps you could figger him into that place. It would 
just suit all the neighbors. We do feel a leetle cut up. 


64 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


hat’s sartin, over the way things hev gone, — but wet 
don’t blame you, Peter, ’s sure ’s you live. No one kin 
say that you didn’t do ’s well as you could in the hull 
business. Just fix up that place for Lem an’ it’s all 
right.” 

Ach zo ! I vill sent py telegraph,” said Peter, puff- 
ing earnestly, “unt in von veek ve can see. I like dot 
Lem Gippin for postmaster unt ve fix dot peesness 
alle right for him ; oh, ja, ja ! ” 

Peter was cheerful again ; a good deal of talk followed 
as to details not essential to be recorded ; the main 
pgint was to ascertain if Amos could secure the impor- 
tant influence of this power — behind the bar — for the 
deserving man in question. 

He had secured this influence. 

He felt his case was won, and was jubilant under 
his commonplace, ordinary exterior, and hastened to 
acquaint his faithful wife so that she might share his 
joy. It was a struggle not to take the “children” into 
their confidence, but for once they were firm. 


/• 


CHAPTER VIII. 


WAITING. 

Lemuel’s visit was to extend through the week after 
Thanksgiving. 

How much there was to fill the delightful hours, not 
excepting the interest and curiosity each one enjoyed at 
the absorbing mystery of Amos and his wife, concern- 
ing which no time nor corner seemed inappropriate to 
smile in and whisper. Such was the sense of relief and 
satisfaction of Peter Heinze that the townspeople were 
inclined to agree with him in regard to the County 
Treasurer’s skipping oudt ” with his cash in hand, 
that what he could do for Lemuel Gibbon he did ; and 
that was much. Sam had proudly exhibited his fine 
collection of rocks, fossils, and so forth, and a collection 
of pressed grasses from the meadow, to delight the eye 
of dear old Dr. Lapham himself, had he inspected the 
boy’s treasures. Lemuel’s Greek and Latin, and his 
scientific study — kept up in an odd hour as it chanced 
— came in most usefully. He made out a catalogue 
and labels which Sam read a thousand times in the 
purest, the noblest pleasure to become part and lot of 
one’s experiences in a complicated world. 

Then upon the evening of Monday, Lem and Tildy 
3 


66 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


had to go with all their cousins to the reading club. 
This met at a neighboring house and the twenty-one 
members were inclined to believe that its attractions 
rivalled those of the dancing club which each month 
held a party in the town-hall. 

The visitors, Lemuel and his wife, found themselves 
in a handsome parlor, genially warm, lighted by the soft, 
steady glow of shaded lamps which seemed to them the 
most charming light in the world. The various mem- 
bers of the reading club — some rustic, some other- 
wise — were all present, ready to begin the work of the 
evening, which for the first half hour was devoted to a 
Latin exercise. Lemuel was amazed to observe how 
crude and elementary it all was. In a sort of hazy out- 
line appeared before him new uses for his own acquire- 
ments, never estimated before at their true worth. It 
was something when a man was lucky enough to be 
among people who valued education, to have been a first- 
class man at an English university. 

And how for these dreary years — Ah me ! had he 
grovelled among the earth beetles ? Could he yet es- 
cape ? As yet he had never been able to discern a 
way clear to a higher and a more congenial life. At 
the unanimous request of the club, Lemuel for that 
evening took the chair as leader. 

The general good cheer of his visit had brought to 
the surface many a softening emotion long dormant. 
A steady voice and a calm face and self-possession to do 
well his part before them, was what Lemuel did that 
evening, but it was with a full heart. 

Upon the face of his wife could be traced the bright 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 6 / 

light of one week’s peace, plenty, and gladsome pros- 
perity. 

Its influence was a wonder. After they were all 
back home in Uncle Early’s kitchen Ford declared that 
his cousin was growing young and beautiful. Sam said, 
may my last end be like hers,” at which his mother 
was so indignant that she tightly closed her lips and 
gave him a grave gaze that no word of his had the least 
power to soften. Lemuel did not see why Sam should 
joke. A pun he disliked but could swallow. Pure wit 
he enjoyed, but a joke: why, what was the sense of 
that he demanded of himself as often as he heard one. 
Hence Master Sam was unheeded. Lemuel made haste 
to declare that Ford was right, and was gracious to his 
wife as a lover. Tildy, with a mild acquiescence in 
that bit of flattery, gave them a soft, lambent smile, a 
“starry radiance” almost beautiful, and at once and for- 
ever sunk out of possible range of fancy the morbid 
thoughts of the past. Susan, in the midst of so much 
cheerful converse, was dull, if not quite unresponsive, 
and sad. Gabriel was invisible. Whither he had be- 
taken himself was an inquiry she did not care to make. 
Those two brothers of hers, bad subjects, knew well 
enough that Sunday “ Gabe ” had been confined to the 
house with some slight indisposition, and that Monday 
he had been called to town. If they could have a joke 
on the boy Gottlieb, or on their sister Susan, equally 
sweet was the savor. If Susan would find out where 
Gabe had gone let her do it by her wits. Did it ever 
occur to Ford and Sam that a victim might study how 
to retaliate ? 


68 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


It was the evening after the club. The usual com- 
pany gathered in Uncle Early’s kitchen. What a bright, 
warm nook it was, with its lamps on the table, its com- 
pany of darners and menders sitting about to finish that 
work before going to the parlor. The men with free 
minds had no work. Theirs had ended with the sun. 
Sitting to toast their knees. Uncle Amos and Lem 
smoked in unworried comfort. Aunt Early could put 
aside the week’s darning with the pressure of several 
other like jobs that should be then and there completed. 
But she would not let the sewing be a bugbear, so quietly 
put it off to make up for it by extra exertion at another 
time. Aunt Early had some theories ; she did not 
advance them, but in many a hard hour, visions of a 
woman’s life, wherein said woman should be content to 
be master of one trade, — overseeing a house, for exam- 
ple — instead of one hundred trades, took shape in illu- 
sive hopes and fancies that seemed to her to have been 
born in heaven. 

The boys had not come in from the barn. Their 
mother often turned her head to listen for them, momen- 
tarily expecting to hear the shed door close behind them 
with its accustomed bang. 

Once or twice she thought she could distinguish 
shuffling foot-falls in Gottlieb’s room above, but, inter- 
ested in other things, paid no attention to it. 

Pa,” said Betsy, “ tell us about when you were in the 
army.” 

“ I see,” said Lemuel, “from the evening’s paper, that 
they are growling because a bill is before Congress to 
give an annuity to each old soldier, together with 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


69 


several hundred acres of land; not a slice of alkali 
desert, on the sordid conditions that we go and live on 
it, but a real, bona fide^ out-and-out farm, by Jove ! ” 

“ Sho ! ” said Amos. 

“ Might better do that,” said Betsy the epigrammati- 
cal, “ than for Congress to give all the desirable land in 
the country to speculators.” 

“1 should say so,” said Susan, busy with her darning, 
snipping off the rough edges of a heartless rent. 

Amos gravely knocked the ashes from his ancient 
pipe. He was lame that day, and with more effort 
than upon his well days, he stumped over to the clock- 
shelf to lay it aside. Settling comfortably again in his 
high-backed rocker, he said : 

Wall, ef the government sees fit to give me a little 
something for this game leg, I dunno as I’d throw my 
good luck over my shoulder.” 

“That’s so, pa,” said ma looking out over the top of 
her glasses with much sympathy. 

It was time for Lemuel’s wife to say something. 

“You can hardly find an old soldier,” said she, “who 
has not some infirmity to last him his lifetime. The 
worst effects of the exposure in camp come all these 
years after ; every man has something or other to bui - 
den his few remaining years.” 

From her warm corner by the stove, Tildy spoke with 
great earnestness. ^ 

“ Td like to know of any one of Napoleon’s soldiers 
who were braver than Lemuel. Look how he alone of 
his corps dared to carry despatches at Fort Hudson, at 


70 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


what a risk. It’s a wonder he pulled through without 
capture, or mortal wound.” 

Never mind that, Rosy,” said her husband, with a 
new expression on his face, as of a man brave and 
shy, praised openly for what he is glad to have done. 

The eyes of his wife shone ; she would have spoken, 
save that Betsy’s crisp voice was heard the same 
moment. 

“And pa, too,” said she. “Pa, tell us how at — ” 

“ Baytong Roosh,” said Susan, helping out with her 
P'rench, her Anglo-Saxon sister. 

“That’s it,” continued Betsy. “Tell us how at that 
battle, you ran alone into the rebel ranks and recap- 
tured your regimental colors, and how our boys followed 
to drag you back after you had mounted a cannon as a 
horse.” 

“Sho,” said Amos, “that’s nothin’.” 

“What a brave man you were, pa,” said Maria. 

Their father laughed. As he made no reply. Miss 
Betsy once more took the floor. 

“If pa won’t talk, nor Lem either. I’ll just say for 
that / think” — she spoke with a pretty enthusiasm 
“Well, it’s just this way,” she said. “It never would do 
to interfere with the best interests of a great nation. 
The ones who might be first to destroy would be first to 
repent when they became wise to understand the 
science of political questions. I do hope the govern- 
ment will give the needy everywhere money for schools 
and universities for the state. Besides all that, it should 
be the duty of our government to take care of the rap- 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


71 


idly-dwindling number whose best strength and endur- 
ance were spent to preserve that government. We 
cannot do too much for our old soldiers.” 

“True,” said they all as a chorus. “ I believe,” said 
Susan, now repudiating her own and her sister’s theory 
of the surprise party as her father and mother’s secret, 
“ I do believe, pa, that this was the secret you and ma 
have been whispering about all the week.” Maria silent 
and busy, and Betsy threw do^n into the great basket 
their stocking darning and exclaimed with Susan, 
“That’s it, that’s it,” at the same time with sharp-set 
curiosity awaiting the reply of their father, which was, 

“ Oh, it is, hey ? ” 

“ Pa is as mean as he can be,” said all the young peo- 
ple speaking both to pa and ma. But all in vain. The 
aEectionate parents shook their heads ; with silent 
strong-mindedness most unheard of, each hoping in 
secret for good news with the yellow envelope that so 
seldom brought any word, either to themselves or their 
townsmen. 

This scene of domestic quiet and peace was now 
brought to a sudden termination. An exceeding great 
uproar up-stairs in Gottlieb’s room, a prolonged howl, a 
rush and a jump on the narrow, dark, back stairway, and 
as one who had at a bound descended from some upper 
regions of untold terrors, with arms flying like the con- 
tinuations of a windmill, feet in wild bounds of afright, 
hair to match, with staring eyes, and voice full of laugh- 
ter, tears, sobs, and rampant indignation, in the midst 
of them was — Gottlieb. 


CHAPTER XIL 


In the height of the confusion thus created he ejac- 
ulated : “ Ach ! Samm^ put a hefi in my bet — look 

vonce!” Without allowing his really alarmed hearers 
time to grasp his meaning, he ran up-stairs again, shirt- 
sleeves, pants, boot-legs all going at once. 

Aunt Early, severe to austerity, with angular motion 
grasped a candlestick, marched to the stair door and 
disappeared up the stairs. To follow her was quick 
work for all but Amos. He sat in his chair and re- 
marked for his own sole benefit, Some o’ them boys’ 
tricks again.” 

From his silent laughter, he appeared to wish he was 
with the boys in his own proper person ; being with 
them in the spirit was tame. 

Very severe. Aunt Early’ grasped her candlestick; 
with a stern face her head rose up into the dark space 
above ; and, not at all severe, the other heads followed 
suit. 

Dim in the open window, in the farther gable of the 
garret, were another variety of heads, round in shadow 
and in a cluster. Not to be mistaken were smothered 
sounds of laughter, not to rnention the tiny boyish 
giggle of little Ned, easily recognized by his indig- 
nant (.?) parents. 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 73 

While our party marched over to the bed, the window 
became shining, black and vacant. Two ends of what 
might be ladders were miraculously removed, and no 
heads were there. 

With Gottlieb at her elbow. Aunt Early examined the 
bed. The others waited. Lemuel came to the front, 
thinking of the desperate assault of a discovered tramp, 
and had a set of steel muscles to greet him if occasion 
demanded. 

But it was no tramp. 

Sure enough ! ” said the good lady afterwards, 
“ Right down in the middle of ‘ that boy's ' bed was 
poor old Whitey, between the quilts, nearly smothered 
and half frightened to death. She flew against me with 
a jounce. I did feel too angry with them boys when 
she cried Kwa ! Kwa ! Kwa ! before she flopped over into 
a corner.”- 

So it was. With articulate and inarticulate sounds of 
reproof. Aunt Early straightened out the bed. She 
was not in accord with a lot of laughing simpletons about 
her. Down to the kitchen she then led the way, in 
company with her staff, none now having any lingering 
fear of tramps. 

Gottlieb, with many a quaking, composed himself to 
the slumbers of sweet sixteen. His dreams were dis- 
turbed by fears that old Whitey in the corner would 
alight upon the head that he had so tightly covered with 
the bed-clothes. 

Aunt Amos, arriving in the kitchen, wore a face to 
which vinegar and lemons were milk and honey. Nor 
did she feel any sense of the innoce'nce of her boys, sit- 


74 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


ting there in good order, all ready to talk or do any 
evening duty required of them. Catching Amos in the 
midst of an underhand, wicked laugh with little Ned, 
upon him she threw the full blare of her uncompromising 
spectacles. 

He sheepishly drew down the upturned corners of 
his mouth, and again stumped over to fill up his pipe. 

“ I do declare, Amos Early,” said she, sternly, “ you 
are as bad as them boys and a heap worse.” 

Thus saying, she took up her knitting, too overcome 
by Sam’s latest joke to utter another word, and as for 
unbending a muscle of her face — 


CHAPTER XIIL 


WHY ABSENCE ON THE PART OF GABRIEL STRONG? 

The fortune of Gabriel Strong lay in his stone 
quarries. 

To use his stone it must be broken up and removed 
from the ground. 

In order to remove it, broken, from the ground, blast- 
ing was necessary ; blasting was often effected by 
means of Dynamite Cartridges. To purchase a new 
supply of these dangerous explosives had been the 
object of Gabriel’s trip to town. 

Tuesday he had returned bringing with him the car- 
tridges carefully packed. The uncanny box he deposit- 
ed in a shed removed a safe distance from the house 
and farm buildings. 

He had stopped over night in town to attend the 
opera, certain that the “ boys ” would explain his ab- 
sence to all inquiring friends. With what impatience 
she would await his coming. 

What a fine chance this would be to repay some of 
her willfulness. He remembered how illy she had 
taken his wise advice Thanksgiving. Like the hero in 
an opera singing his griefs, fears, hopes, plans, in solo, 
he thought of this painful subject in all its bearings. 


76 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


‘‘Long threatening comes at last,” he whistled as he 
thought how fitting was this sentiment from the Merry 
War' as applied to himself and his dear Susan. Long 
had he “threatened ” his sweetheart with a lesson, now 
she should have it. 

He would let her wait in vain for his company that 
evening. 

That, my dear sir, will be as bad for you as for the 
other. True : then let it be so ; he was not going 
there, and that decided it. 

From the kitchen door of his mother’s house, where 
the mild lady was busy with her day’s quiet labors, 
never dreaming of the treason growing into definite 
shape in her son’s kind heart, he walked along the foot- 
path through the snow toward the quarries. With a 
firm step he passed by the rickety door of his powder- 
house, busily thinking, when at that moment he plunged 
one foot deep into the hard drift at his left. With an 
air distrait he pulled it out and trudged on. Should he 
go to see her the next night, Wednesday .? In truth he 
had a world of rarest news to tell since “last they met,” 
only Thursday. It seemed months. 

At the quarry he spent a long, long day, directing the 
men in blasting and in the daily routine, having to do 
with the work in general. 

Again at dusk along the narrow track walked Gabriel 
Strong, moody, looking upon the world as the most 
stupid of all stupid humbugs he could imagine. Close 
about the ears was his sealskin coat collar, shading his 
gray eyes a fur cap to match ; his strong hands were 
white and his fur gloves were new. His New York 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


77 


suit beneath the handsome great-coat was of the 
choicest as to style and good taste. His working great- 
coat was left at the quarry as usual. Yes, in dress he 
was spick and span enough to spend the evening any- 
where. Why not drive over to Sue’s } 

Very reluctant he forced himself to walk up to his 
door. 

It was the last light of a winter day. 

So absorbed was the young man in the discomfort of 
unhappy thoughts that the sight of a short, broad figure, 
crossing and re-crossing the field in the vicinity of the 
powder-house, passed unnoticed at the time. 

With a cloud on his brow he walked into the house. 
He was silent before the guests at his mother’s well- 
spread table. His mother did not believe in staying 
alone. 

After supper, to the sorrow of an antediluvian maiden 
lady who admired him in the character of a gloomy 
young man, he did not go to the parlor, but marched 
directly up to the cosiest room in that cosy house, 
tossed aside his clothes and himself into bed to sleep 
the sleep of youth and health until seven of the clock 
the next morning. 

Alas! when sleep is nature’s blest restorer, when a 
young man is silent and distrait, why don’t he follow 
the fine example of that young athlete, Gabriel Strong .? 
His club said not a man in the country could stand up 
before him in a boxing match. And to the develop- 
ment of nerve and muscle the whole country seemed to 
be at this time absolutely devoted, “training,” “gloves,” 
“clubs,” “Graeco-Roman wrestling matches,” all the 


78 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


talk. When the boys were together this new craze 
gave their conversation a technical character to be 
understood only by the initiated. The craze set all 
the young men against drink and excess, save the 
excess of bars and dumb-bells. Their mothers de- 
voutly hoped that in this they would not do themselves 
more permanent injury than by beer, or cigars, or 
tobacco and whisky. If they only would exercise the 
caution good sense suggested, it was a move in the 
right direction, as culture of all sorts is a move in 
the right direction. 

Wednesday was not unlike its predecessor. 

It was again dusk. Should this young man who had 
so punished himself, now obey the impulses of his 
heart ? or should he keep on in this cruel course until 
further notice } 

In how many a happy impulse had he paused before 
the door of his house to lift his face to the great sky 
above him. To-night, from the heavy heart within, 
came no beautiful visions at his call. The sky was 
inane, not a star had come. The grim waste on all 
sides was drear to the uttermost. The black trees, with 
no shadow in the darkening day, took shape like un- 
blest thoughts in the mind. 

In no sense of joy from a beautiful scene he threw 
himself down on a seat in the stoop, listlessly wondering 
if he had left everything as it should be ; had he left 
any duty unattended in his day’s work } There was the 
old hut wherein for safe keeping was a stock of blasting 
material. Since Tuesday morning he had not been 
there. 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 79 

Better go and take a look, and by personal examina- 
tion know if everything was as it should be. 

By the way ! Someone had crossed the field last 
night and returned again to the road. 

Gabriel’s sluggish mind, instantly on the alert, 
sprung into being at a bound, as if by a shock of his 
own blasting powder, giving him a sense of terrible 
alarm. 

He had seen a short, broad figure the evening before 
— that big slouched hat, those round boot-legs, that 
ploughman’s gait, — Gabriel quickened his pace to a 
run the sooner to be at the hut to inspect his various 
packages of explosives. 

There was one person to whom this picture exactly 
corresponded : it was Gottlieb. 

Gabriel pushed aside the old door, shoving on the 
bare ground, hanging as it did by one upper hinge. 

Within all seemed as he had left it. But he must 
search more thoroughly. Not with a lamp to light the 
interior, but in the fast-dying twilight, with a hand that 
trembled in spite of himself he felt about the place. 
His eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom saw boxes, 
kegs, one or two paper bags, empty on the ground, all as 
he had last left it. 

He had completed the circuit, excepting a last box. 
Therein reposed a dozen of a new explosive, far worse 
than any other to handle on account of the extreme 
danger arising from the least carelessness. 

These were Dynamite Cartridges^ made in scientific 
folly to usurp the place of energy, quite well enough 
before developed with simple powder. A substance. 


8o 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


this dynamite and its kin, well to be blotted out of exist- 
ence by the laws of nations forbidding either its use or 
its manufacture. 

If Gabriel bad described his next hour and a half of 
horror, the weight of the anathemas alone would have 
moulded public opinion to this verdict : Death penalty 
for the use or the manufacture of these infernal ma- 
chines in any form. 

For now, with a touch of velvet, he felt among the 
gray, candle-shaped contents of the box. With increas- 
ing horror he as delicately, as carefully counted each as 
his icy fingers fell upon it. 

He had counted them. In the dim light he stood up 
stock still, as if powerless to move ; then, rallying every 
energy, fairly flew up the path to the barn. It was 
worse than he could have feared, for of all his powder 
and blasting explosives, it was here he found the theft 
had been committed. 

One Dynamite Cartridge was gone — carried off by 
Gottlieb. Unless, — merciful heaven! — unless he had 
blown up the house and family of Amos Early, the 
dreadful missile was yet in the possession of that fool- 
hardy boy. Never in the after-life of Gabriel Strong 
did he forget that hour. How obediently did his faith- 
ful horse obey whip and spur. To say that she knew 
the whole story of her rider’s fear and agitation would 
hardly do injustice to her intelligence. 

Gabriel endeavored to be calm, to prepare his mind 
for the worst, and to receive it accordingly. 

Up the hard, white road he sped, with care at the 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


8l 


same time to guide his horse to the safest part of the 
slippery way. 

Now a thought of Sam’s practical jokes ; then of 
that stupid Gottlieb’s joke in return. Just like the 
boy — and Sue! 

Was it already too late } Would he be able to get 
there in time ? This was the time of all times for his 
sure-footed horse to stumble. 

And stumble he did. 

Was he injured ? Gabriel in despair 3aw that his 
knee was sprained and that a slow foot pace was too 
painful to be undertaken unless the rider walked at his 
side. Here he was in the woods, a two-mile stretch 
ahead, no house in sight, up there on the north road, 
and a lame horse, and every moment frought with the 
burden of life or death. It took but a second to make 
arctic coat and shoes into a bundle to strap to the sad- 
dle, and then buttoning his short coat trim and snug, 
he was off on a run, leaving the disabled beast to 
follow. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 

It was supper-time this very Wednesday. The famil- 
iar sight of the family about the table was the same as 
it was every night. 

What puzzled the family was the unanimous spirit 
betrayed by pa and ma in watching the outside door. 

Betsy had let down the snowy curtains ; the red coal 
was very bright, too bright, in the stove. If not looked 
after soon, the fire would be in ashes. The white, 
bare floor, uncle Amos’ high-backed chair in the corner, 
were fine touches in a homely home picture. 

Sue seemed as gay as if for the first time in her com- 
fortable life secret grief had not paled her bright cheek. 
To-night she was stately, if not, strictly speaking, beau- 
tiful. Hoping that some one would come, and with 
an idea that perhaps her father and mother had really 
planned a surprise party for their dear children, she was 
going to. be ready whatever might happen : hence had 
called forth a slight remonstrance from her surprised 
mother by appearing at the supper-table in her very 
newest and best silk gown, all dark blue, in graceful 
lines of drapery with white lace at throat and wrists. 

‘‘Why, Susan Early, the idee!” had been her 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, * 83 

mother’s applause to her d^but. “Do you see that, pa? 
What air the young folks acomin’ to ? ” 

Susan didn’t mind that, and glanced at the kitchen 
looking-glass to take a last survey of her hair, in a bran 
new style of coiffure. This was Tildy’s doing, — a style 
noted in town the day before coming to make her visit. 
In the store where she saw it Tildy ardently wished 
that she had hair to dress in the same fluffy curves and 
bands. As she had not, she had tried its effect on 
Sue’s pale locks. 

Most hair is beautiful as wonderful when one studies 
its various needs and the uses suited to its nature. 

Susan’s hair brushed high upon her head, no longer 
concealed the milk-white neck, round, and with a dim- 
ple in the nape. Her broad, low forehead, denuded 
of wild shaggy bangs and frizzles — a la Broncha pony — 
ivory white, with an occasional tendril of soft, short 
curl, made plain, though long since doubtful, that her 
face was the mirror of many a varying expression 
besides the one Frenchy leer of which she herself had 
been unconscious. 

Her father was well pleased at the improved appear- 
ance of his beloved daughter. He was not blind to the 
fact that the other girls had taken cue and were especially 
well dressed to-night. So far it was well, “ fine feathers 
make fine birds,” but joy and content spring from deeper 
sources. The others were doubtless happy. Not so 
Susan. Very often she sighed profoundly; in anxious 
anticipation her heart throbbed at any noise purporting 
to give sign of an arrival. 

So here in the kitchen were Maria and Betsy, Tildy 


84 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


and Sue, Walt, Sax, Ford and Sam, and little Ned. Pa 
and ma to keep ‘‘order,” all in an interesting chat and 
flutter incident to the close of the meal, last scraps of 
conversation, pipes for pa and Lem, not for the “boys,” 
who despised the weed, as they had decided that it 
lessened their “staying power” in exercises, such as 
boxing, which required strength, activity and reserve 
power to endure. 

Tise had brought in the milk and stood by the stove 
warming his hands. A ridiculous object, that Tise, 
on his head such a fur cap, a rope tied tightly about his 
waist serving for the articles of dress named by uncle 
Amos as “gallooses,” and at the same time to hold in 
place his double-breasted old brown coat guiltless of 
either buttons or buttonholes of any good to confine a 
coat so broad to a figure so lank. There was a certain 
paleness on his hollow cheeks above his short wool-like 
beard, and the nose above his long black moustache 
even yet was red from his Thanksgiving libations. Gott- 
lieb felt that Sammy’s eye was upon him, and with many 
a chuckle, and with his left arm close at his side after 
the trussed fowl model, did the grinning youth draw 
near the stove. But at each attempt to gain his desired 
position was he forced to sidle off in the opposite direc- 
tion; Sam, out of pure mischief, being the barrier. No 
nearer than a radius of four feet did he get to the rapidly 
cooling range. With eyebrows raised to absurd curves 
Sam was the further cause of convulsive te-he-ing from 
the boy. How slight were the obstacles, then, which 
from moment to moment delayed a catastrophe the mind 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 85 

dreads to picture even in this chief epoch of like sense- 
less results of trifling and folly. 

‘'I am glad, Gottlieb,” said Betsy, *‘to see that, for 
once, you have kept on your coat. Now, Sam, if he’s 
cold, why don’t you let him come to the stove and get 
warm } ” 

Sam winked at Gottlieb with his right eye, but, 
brother-like, he exerted himself to occupy as much 
space as possible, going to the extent of drawing up a 
superfluous chair to accommodate his long legs. 

Gottlieb said, ducking his head with its bushy white 
hair, ^‘Ach, no. I haf no colt. I yoost shtay in a 
leetle vhile,” which information he confirmed by finding 
a low seat in the north-east corner of the room, by an 
outside door, still grinning back at Sam and never 
moving the arm so close to his side. 

Very soon all in the large kitchen were engaged in 
their own affairs. It was a chance for Gottlieb to take 
a bit of comfort in his. By slow degrees he drew from 
beneath his old black frock coat a gray, candle-shaped 
toy, in length about eighteen inches. With closest 
affection he attentively examined it on all sides ; tossed 
it up a few inches above his head, as a boy with a ruler, 
and when it described a fine curve in the air caught it 
with a grasp between his two clumsy hands. 

If it had dropped to the floor ! 

He looked at Sam, whose face was now very bright, 
being in the midst of telling a story to Lemuel, who 
shortly before had come in from a walk to the spring 
after a pail of fresh water for Aunt Amos, and who now 
was smoking with the old gentleman. 


86 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


Gottlieb, glad to be unobserved, now scribbled a few 
words on his toy, merely his own name and Sam’s, 
in German, his knowledge of writing being of the 
slightest. 

Susan was talking with Tildy, for her mother had 
said, ‘‘No, child; never mind about helpin’ with the 
work, in that dress. Me an’ the girls ’ll git it done in 
less than no time. You look kind o’ peeked, too. I 
do believe that is the prettiest dress you hev ever had.” 

Maria came toward Gottlieb with a pan of milk in 
both hands. 

In a quick jerk the boy hid what was in his hands 
under his coat, and picking up a stick began to whittle. 
All this time Amos Early and his wife were in an anx- 
iety so illy kept from the rest that Betsy said to her sis- 
ters and Tildy, likewise observant, “Girls, do see ’em.” 
It’s a surprise party ’s sure as you live.” 

“ See how they fairly hover by that door,” said Sue. 

Ford now was talking to the boys. “Camping,” said 
he to the group about Sam. “Why, I’ll tell you of the 
laziest and j oiliest company of campers that ever went 
back to nature in an army tent and a hammock.” 

There was an interruption. It was not from Gottlieb. 
Outside the door on the stoop was heard a noise as if 
some person were quietly knocking the hard snow from 
a substantial overshoe. 

Amos forgot his stiff knee : he rose to open the door 
with surprising agility. There was no call for his exer- 
tion, for with a very soft tap, as from the muffled paw of 
a bear, the knob was turned with no delay and the open- 
ing of the door was followed by the entrance of a 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


87 


figure, a man, in width exceeding height, if far from 
brief as to stature. A close cap, hidden by the wide 
collar of a buffalo skin fashioned into a coat reaching 
to within a few inches of the floor ; beneath this outer 
wrap a great-coat, and one would conclude a tailor’s 
shop full of clothes beside. 

A muffled voice said some undistinguishable words, 
while the shaggy arms tugged away at comforter and 
hat and unbuttoned the buffalo coat. 

“ Glad to see ye,” said Amos, putting out his hand to 
do the honors of his house. “Wife, this is Peter 
Heinze. Mr. . Heinze, Miss Early ; you know Peter, 
don’t you } ” 

“Well, I’ve heerd on ’im, an’ I’m glad t’ see y’, 
Mr. Heinze.” 

Peter deposited his fur cap and huge neck-scarf in 
the nearest chair, then was free to shake hands in 
homely good will with all present. 

“ Well,” said Amos, too anxious to bide the time of 
Peter for news, “Well, it’s a cold night. I didn’t 
think you would get up here.” 

Peter put back into his pocket the red handkerchief 
he had brought out to remove the ice from his mustache, 
and by means of which he had elicited a sound as a 
trumpet-blast from his “nose like a cherry.” 

“Y-a-a-s, dot ish zo,” said he; “aber,” and with 
infinite exertion he took a yellow envelope from the 
inner recess of a long pocket-book, far back in some 
remote crypt of a coat a thousand miles out of sight. 

“ Y-a-a-s, here ish dot. Dot Herr Gippon, he haf got 
dot post-offlce. To-morrow must he go dere unt pegin.” 


88 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


A brief telegram, to be followed by mail matter, ex- 
plained it all. Amos grasped the thin paper in his 
veined hand. 

Peter’s round face beamed with satisfaction, honest 
and true, of a good deed brought to a successful issue, 
and an undertone of political joy that now Amos and 
his influence would not be against his re-election to the 
House when the momentous time should again come to 
prove how history repeats herself. 

“What’s up.?” demanded Ford, coming over, while 
yet his father, by aid of his spectacles — at last in place 
— was trying to connect some meaning with the scrawl 
he was holding up to the lamp to get the best light. 

“ Let me see, Amos,” said his wife. Instinctively, as 
one used to obey, he lowered his hand, and the two old 
heads were bent over the dispatch from Washington. 

“ Oh, what is it .? ” cried the girls, one and all, gather- 
ing around, glad to be talking and noisy in a great 
hubbub. 

“What is it, Peter.?” said Sax, shaking hands as a 
last one on the scene. 

“ Dot Lemuel Gippon, he iss for bost-master. See .? ” 

Peter smiled like a picture of good-nature. 

“What’s that .? ” said Ford. “Is Lem in place of the 
other one .? ” 

“Dot iss it; ve haf heart. I pring him ofer.” He 
looked sharply at the clear cut face of the man he had 
so willingly assisted to a position — a paradise to what 
had been. 

“Hallo, Lem !” exclaimed Sam jumping up, “They’ve 
got you in as post-master ; what do you think of that ? ” 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 89 

The man sitting by himself at the other side of the 
table laid down the evening paper. A stare, incredu- 
lous, as one who vaguely strives to grasp a new idea. 

‘‘It’s true,” said Amos, with a joy he was never so 
world-worn as to hide; “tell your boss good-bye, for 
you’ve got to come out here and live.” Lemuel rose to 
make some sort of an advance upon Peter. 

“Woll den,” said Peter, “I am ferry glad to see you 
for bost-master.” 

“ This is the good man who had them put you 
in,” said Aunt Early. “Come, Lemuel, and say your 
best speech to him, and that you’ll be glad to be it.” 

The “best speech” of poor Lem was a cordial shak- 
ing of hands with the smiling, gesticulating German. 

“Think of it, Tildy,” said Maria, “you can hire that 
cottage of — why, it’s yours, Mr. Heinze, sure enough. 
You’ll let ’em have it, won’t you.? How lovely it will 
be.” 

“ Y-a-a-s,” said Peter, shaking like a jelly, with a 
resounding ha, ha, the effervescence of his sympathy in 
the delight of the girls, heightened by an understand- 
ing of what his own early days had experienced in the 
line of pinched faces and thread-bare clothes. Peter 
hastened to add, “Dot leetle house is joost for you: 
aber first vill I haf him painted, unt make him all 
good — oh, dqf ish von nice varm leetle house. I haf 
him built for mine selluf : oh, ja, ja.” 

While this brief little scene, with its brief talk and 
its ready laughter, was going on, riveting the atten- 
tion of every one present, including that of the well- 


90 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


pleased Tise, sitting behind the stove, on the boot- 
bench, Gottlieb had listened, and used his eyes until 
the excitement of it all was, after his stupid manner, 
comprehended. Now as they were talking he said to 
himself, let him slip along by the wall; so he did. He 
drew nearer and nearer the cook-stove. It would be 
the only chance to carry out his joke. 

By the same wonderful Power that had kept them 
until that moment, the fire was dull. This did the -boy 
discover with disgust, still beneath the white ash was a 
faint spark. How faint; how terrible! Even so — it 
might be — would it be enough, wondered Gottlieb, with 
the weapon of destruction in his right hand. With the 
left he made wide open the amplest space by lifting off 
a stove lid. 

He saw that the fuse was as long again as it should 
have been, still, perhaps it would ignite in that dead 
fire, and he looked about to see if he could now, unob- 
served, push it along in under the cover. 

Lemuel made an effort to realize his good fortune. 

At a flash of thought the long, long dingy road to his 
old desk was again his last waking sigh ; he heard the 
harsh, nasal voice of Mr. Teller urge him on to extra 
work. Then, at the next instant, he remembered the 
country air, delicious air laden with the fragrance of 
wild rose and sweet clover. How long, oh, how long ! 
Lemuel dared not speak. Should he show his weakness 
before these noble friends } 

Very white, he stepped around Peter to be at the 
door. He would rush out into the night. His hand 
was on the latch, but before he had moved the door it 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 9 1 

was flung back into his face. There was a new actor ; 
it was Gabriel Strong, looking like a dead man, blind 
to the astonishment he caused. 

One glance commanding the room and all therein, 
detected Gottlieb bending over the stove. 

One bound, a shout : Stand back from the door ! ” 
a fizzing flash as he had seized what the boy was near 
to drop in confusion, a something flung, hissing, far into 
the black night to fall over the brow of the hill ; then a 
concussion. 

The house vibrated as a man-of war when a broadside 
has left its quivering timbers and sped on its errand of 
wrath. 

There was crack and splinter of breaking glass, fol- 
lowed by oppressive silence. 

To the astounded company the sight of Gabriel and a 
glimpse at what he had so marvelously accomplished, at 
the danger of his own life, explained all. Thoroughly 
familiar to them were the various modes of blasting. 
They saw what had been Gottlieb’s intention, and what 
Gabriel Strong — now exhausted, and fallen into Uncle 
Amos’ chair, — had known as by instinct when in the 
twilight gloom of his powder-house. 

With one accord, in consternation they cried : 

A Dynamite Cartridge ! ” 

Each one present came to feel the full force of their 
danger ; the momentary silence was one of dread and 
terror. 

Gottlieb alone was free from these emotions. What 
he felt was a shame-facedness that his “joke” had been 


92 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


discovered, mingled therewith keen disappointment that 
it had fallen through. 

With a senseless grin he sheepishly stared from Ford 
to Sam, then ducked his head. 

“ W-a-a-1, by gum ! ” said Sax. 

“W-a-a-1, I swow ! ” gasped Sam. 

Long before this had Peter Heinze had to do with 
Gottlieb ; he knew him. 

Peter stood transfixed, with uplifted hands and lower 
jaw dropped on his breast. All the effects of a most 
sudden and complete scare were united with amazement. 
Gradually his amazement gave way to one of the violent 
fits of anger not unusual with him. His round, fat face 
grew as white as such a face could well be. He strode 
over to the boy and, seizing him by the coat-collar, 
shook him roughly, as at the same time he ejaculated, — 

“You tarn leetle FOOL!” 

Poor Gottlieb, now in dread of what the Iron Duke 
would have called a “ thrashing,” began to cry aloud in 
a sonorous tone. 

“Look out, Peter,” said Sam the irrepressible, “he 
may have another.” 

Peter fell back. 

From the focus of his bent arm about his face, Gott 
lieb said in a broken voice : 

“Dot mak notting oudt. Zo it is mit dose bombs 
effry tay in te qvuarry.” 

With a noisy show of hurt feelings, the boy sat down 
by Tise, who had sprung from his seat in horror, and 
stood scowling at him savagely, and said, in language 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


93 


interspersed with his own peculiar words of euphony, 

“ If you ever bring any of those things round this 

house again, I’ll break your neck ; now you mind ! ” 
Gottlieb was meek and snuffled dolefully. 

Peter standing back as if he had no mind to risk 
another ^‘bomb,” but in full rage, must give vent to it 
on general principles of volcanic eruption. 

“ I tell you von ting,” said he, to the running accom- 
paniment of a smothered sobbing from Gottlieb, often 
increasing to a dismal howl, “ ve tont vant sooch tings 
as dose in dees countdry. Vhat ish dot vhen any pody 
can cet sooch tings. Py himmel ! Vhen I co to Vash- 
ington, I puts a pill in dot house zo vhen beobles make 
dot dynamite it is for no good. Ve put sooch a man in 
brison, in chail, vhat you call ’im ? ” 

“Any man,” said Lemuel, now diverted effectually 
from himself, “ any man who will manufacture stuff like 
that is first cause of all the villainy it may work., and 
he ought to be punished accordingly. Even in war we 
don’t want it. It’s no more a part of civilized warfare 
than it is to turn loose on an enemy a herd of savages, 
or to burn and torture our captives. It’s a cause for 
death penalty, if any crime is in the list, to make or 
have in property such a devilish compound.” 

With one consent the pale and frightened family up- 
held the views of their spokesmen in regard to Dynam- 
ite and all connected with an agent so deadly. To be 
sure, Susan was less demonstrative in her words and 
acts to the company at large, for every thought of her 
heart, now that the danger was at an end, was centered 


94 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


upon Gabriel. If, in the inaudible utterances between 
them, more than one oscillatory proof of their sincerity 
*was given and received, it was an obvious inference that 
all was peace between them, and that having known the 
woes of strife, they never would quarrel again. 


CHAPTER XV. 


PETER HEINZE. 

‘‘Confound that boy,” said Amos, “he has made a 
pretty rumpus. Gottlieb, dry up ! Stop that noise.” 
Amos turned his back to the stove and said to Peter, 
“ Come, Peter, take off your coat and spend the even- 
ing with us.” 

“Yes, yes,” cried all. “Do stay, you must stay.” 

“And I’ll have some hot coffee in five minutes,” said 
Betsy. “Ugh ! how cold it is.” “I’ll fix the fire,” said 
Walt. “ It iss colt,” said Peter taking off his coats with 
no further ceremony. “ Get vonce some qvuilts unt I 
hellup to nail him on te vindows.” So Walt made a 
new fire and some of Aunt Early’s reserve stock of 
quilts went to keep out the cold from the broken win- 
dows. 

In a short time, however, all had adjourned to the 
parlor which was snug and warm in its usual good 
order, all save Betsy and her mother, the one taking 
down the china and the other waiting for the kettle to 
boil. 

Tise said he was agoin’ to bed, and so withdrew, very 
cross. 

“ Don’t you know,” said Aunt Early to Gottlieb, as he 


96 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


still sat on his bench behind the stove, '‘that it was 
awful bad for you to put that thing in the stove? You 
did n’t want to blow us all up, did you ? Think of this 
nice stove being broken all in little pieces and us being 
killed!” 

Gottlieb now shed tears of honest regret as he 
thought of his “joke” in this light. 

“You won’t do it again, will you ? ” continued she. 

“ Ach, nein, nimmer, nimmer, ach Gott I nein ! ” said 
the boy earnestly. 

“ Now you had better go to bed, for it’s time. Here’s 
a nice piece of cake for you.” 

Into the willing grasp of the boy was deposited a 
broad slab of cake as white as the gold-rimmed plate 
whereon the loaf reposed, and it lasted him all the way 
up-stairs and until his head was on its pillow, when he 
instantly fell asleep. 

In the parlor all were at ease ; music was the order of 
the hour. 

Gabriel schooled himself to be resigned when Sue, 
looking so beautiful he could not “ take his eyes off of 
her,” as Sam whispered in sarcasm to Walt, — when 
Sue, as described, sang “When the stars shine.’’ 

Peter Heinze only winced three or four times during 
its progress. 

“It’s your turn now,” said Ford to Peter, who loved 
music, and went over to the piano with good-natured 
unconcern. 

To open his part of the concert he struck the keys 
with a practised touch, before, with absolute perfection ; 
he began the prelude, and followed it by the whole of 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE, 


97 


that stock piece of every German tenor, “Adelaide,” 
perhaps the most beautiful of all the great arias. How 
the man did sing; with what of pure tone; how the 
pathos of that superb song thrilled his hearers, albeit not 
a line of the words could they understand. 

With what simplicity and abandon he threw himself 
into the music. 

Alas ! for English and American self-consciousness, 
that in time past, as it bids fair to do in time to come, 
has closed to them the way to true art. 

Followed “Adelaide” one of the sonatas of Beethoven 
worthy its place on the programme. Never had Sue 
heard anything like it. 

In the recess of the bay window her hand sought 
Gabriel’s. When from Liszt and Chopin one selection 
followed another, they one and all gathered about 
the piano declaring enthusiastically that it was all too 
splendid for that little home group. 

Sue was completely carried away. “ Oh, Mr. Heinze,” 
cried she in a simple frankness that went to a simple 
nature for just what it was worth and never hurt, “Oh, 
Mr. Heinze,” she said, “that is grand, it is glorious. 
How can people devote their souls to trash instead of 
real music. It’s a shame for you to keep that dark, old 
smoky saloon when you can sing just like an angel ! ” 

Peter swung around on the stool to face the two 
young people who stood behind him. 

“ So it iss,” said Peter, “ I haf no lofe for dot peesness 
abervhat shall I to mit mein singing } Dot saloon gifs 
mooch geld for mein frau unt mein six kinder. Ich 
must dot geld haf, eh ” 


4 


98 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


Peter shrugged his shoulders. That was all true ; 
besides Peter rather enjoyed his beer on its own account 
— the effect of ^‘dot peesness.” 

His knowledge of German literature was deep, if not 
to say complete, and in a general education he could 
have compared favorably with the best scholars. It is 
probably a fact that solid hard work every day would 
have been less to his taste and his phlegmatic nature 
than “dot peesness.” 

Going to. Washington was exactly to his mind ; after 
that night Amos and his family were all his firm con- 
stituents. 

Aside from Peter and his vice of indolence, and his 
countless virtues, there was too much truth in the 
remark, and Lemuel felt called upon to add to Peter’s 
confession. 

“It’s a state of society,” said he, “altogether false to 
nature and savoring too much of anarchy by far, to be 
studied with the least encouragement. Beauty delves 
in the shops, humming-birds and nightingales plod 
along in the muck and mire, while moles and hedgehogs, 
ill at ease, are burdened with a weight of gold they don’t 
know how to use. A strange world, my masters.” 

Several of the listeners said that was so, and Peter 
nodded his head and raised his shoulders to his ears in 
a most expressive shrug, while Betsy came in with a 
pile of plates and napkins. 


CONCLUSION. 


Lemuel Gibbon, the very next morning, with no 
formality, took his place as post-master. 

A letter to his late employers brought an angry reply, 
that from him they had not received fair treatment ; if 
they lost by his unceremonious resignation he must 
make it good to them. To leave in that off-hand way 
after they had stood by him all these years ! 

Lemuel’s lip curled in scorn. This from Teller, 
Stoltz & Co., was in point of business ; in point of fact, 
while Lemuel’s vacation was a week from its close, out 
of fifty who were after his old place, the firm selected a 
youth from the writing-school, who deemed himself 
one of the most fortunate of young men, thus to have 
been run off into a cast-iron mould, where he might 
stick as a piece of furniture to the end of his days, work- 
ing for a pittance in a state of slow but sure mental and 
moral starvation. 

Peter was as good as his word. He had the house 
he had built for himself painted and restored to a picture 
of solid comfort. 

Tildy could never have found words to describe the 
joy of it ; so Lemuel ; so little Ned. 


lOO 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. 


A trim housemaid, sure-footed and strong, took the 
load of cares, great and small, in their wear and tear, 
from the shoulders so illy fitted for a burden many 
miserable years had made a necessity, and Tildy for 
for the first time was free from anxious thought as 
to the ways and means of surmounting her hill of 
difficulty. 

Not one of the capable ones of the earth, not one 
with a strength of will to rise superior to it all, she 
accepted her new state in life with a spirit of devout 
thankfulness. 

Lem said it was his greatest comfort to see her grow- 
ing so young and pretty day by day. The people found 
that in him they had a treasure, and hoped it would be 
a long time before his place was filled by another. 

Lemuel agreed to that, but he had discovered new 
openings in case he should be supplanted by some politi- 
cal favorite. Congress might grant that new pension 
bill, and the farm bill. With such aids he could keep 
poverty from the door. Again : in the new universities 
springing up in every section of the West, would not 
his education stand as good a chance for a professorship 
as another man’s education } 

He hoped so. 

Yes, truly, there was “land at last” for the storm- 
tossed wanderer. 

As for Gabriel and Sue, the very next Saturday 
evening Gabriel Strong came after her to go to choir 
meeting. 

“They’ve asked me to lead the singing,” said he, 
“shall I.?” 


THE DYNAMITE CARTRIDGE. lOI 

*‘Do it by all means,” said Sue blithely. They were 
riding along and the stars were shining.” 

“'Oh, Gabriel,” said she, “you don’t know how I have 
come to detest all my poor trash of music. I’m going 
to begin at the beginning and see what I can do with 
what talent I have, and then do it as well as I can, with 
all my heart and soul.” 

“jSweet Sue,” said her beloved one, “ I was trying to 
get at that all the time.” 


THE END. 




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t 


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